The Muppets have reunited and are back for one more heart warming film, hitting theaters today!
The fresh new Muppets saga stars the the loveable Jason Segel, Amy Adams, of course the classic Miss Piggy and Kermit The Frog, and a newcomer named Walter.
We should expect some crazy cameos from the likes of Selena Gomez, Neil Patrick Harris and the crazy character herself, Lady Gaga!
Bringing us this muppet adventure are David Hoberman & Todd Lieberman, who together run Mandeville Films and produced Forgetting Sarah Marshall, The Fighter and now this latest adaptation.
We got a chance to pick the brains of these two Academy Award winning producers and find out all the deets on remaking such a classic film. Check it all out below!
Would you say working with Muppets is easier than working with actors?
Todd Lieberman: (Laughs) There’s challenges that come with both. I’m going to state the obvious, but with each puppet comes a puppeteer who in their own right is an actor because they’re performers. In terms of the complications in working with puppets you’re still dealing with performance, but you’re also dealing with a skill set that is unique. These people are moving the puppets at the same time that they’re acting. So a lot of times people think of puppets or they think of the Muppets.
David Hoberman: Definitely I would say. I used to work for a man who was an agent for a long time, he was a fairly powerful agent back in the day and I met him when he was selling syndicated shows to Norman Lear in the hay day of syndication. ‘What could be better, I’m selling cassettes, I’m not selling actors, it’s so much easier this way.’ I don’t know, every actor is different, we’ve had joyful experiences working with actors. There’s something infinitely intriguing about working with puppeteers and I think once we started shooting and I was really able to gain the respect for what they do and how they do it, it was extraordinary. They kind of got me at hello.
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From the trailer it looks like a great adventure to watch.
TL: I think it’s great to watch audiences react to the movie, because there some outrageously funny things in there. But at it’s core there’s an emotional throughline that I hope will resonate and I believe does resonate because there is a touching story about this character Walter who doesn’t feel like he belongs or fits in with his brother, Gary, Jason Segel. And through the course of the movie he realizes the place he really needs to be and the place he should stay is with the Muppets and there’s really emotional scenes at the end where he makes that choice. I think it’s going to resonate on many levels, but hopefully it will resonate on an emotional human level.
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If you could be a Muppet which one would you be and why?
TL: (Laughs) I think probably my personality is more suited to Fozzie because I sometimes make really dumb jokes. I don’t know if he’s someone I could be or someone that I’m more like, but I relate to that kind of naive sense of humor.
DH: Fozzie, every time he speaks he makes me laugh, so that’s why I would be Fozzie and Bill Baretta who does him just cracks me up. I just always laugh and he’s cuddly and he’s cute and he’s funny.
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How is this one different from the older ones?
TL: Well there’s been so many different ones of the past so when I think of the Muppets movies I grew up on, or the ones through my childhood, I think of the first three movies, I think of the original Muppet movie, The Great Muppet Caper and Muppets Take Manhattan and when I think of the one that speaks to me the most out of the old movies I think of the original, The Muppet Movie. It had this amazing charm in a sense and shockingly or un-shockingly it had and still has a whole lot of heart and emotion, real emotion and what floored me when seeing that movie is watching these characters interact in the real world and that was kind of a breakthrough back then.
So when the creative team between Jason and James and Nick and David and I got in the studio together we wanted to make film that made us feel the way that we felt when we were younger watching the original movie, so hopefully what we’ve accomplished here is something that’ll make you laugh but also hopefully has a real soul to it. That’s really the goal, so I don’t know if it’s different or similar to the Muppets of the past but that’s what we attempted.
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You’ve done Disney, romantic comedies and dramas. Do you have one genre you prefer over the others?
DH: I’ve been wanting to do more dramas my entire career and like so many of us you get a little boxed in and you’re good at comedies, but I really loved the movie we did called The Negotiator years ago, I love the movie we did with Don Cheadle, Traitor and I loved The Fighter and I want to keep doing those. I want to keep doing drama because I think they’re different and they’re equally fun. It’s not that I prefer one versus the other. I’ve done romantic comedies as you said and comedies throughout my career when I was an executive at Disney we became very successful at that comedy and what we weren’t able to do that frequently was dramas, we didn’t do that much. Michael Eisner preferred to get the Bank of America award rather than an Academy Award and I get it but I like both.
