Chatting With The Filmmakers On The Set Of Disney’s Muppets Most Wanted!

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Hey All!

As you all remember from my previous post, I had the amazing opportunity to visit the set of the New Muppets Movie entitled Disney’s Muppets Most Wanted. It was an amazing night filled with so many dream come true moments. Who wouldn’t love spending the day with the Muppets.

If you haven’t heard about this movie, it takes the entire Muppets gang on a global tour, selling out grand theaters in some of Europe’s most exciting destinations, including Berlin, Madrid, Dublin and London. But mayhem follows the Muppets overseas, as they find themselves unwittingly entangled in an international crime caper headed by Constantine—the World’s Number One Criminal and a dead ringer for Kermit the Frog—and his dastardly sidekick Dominic, aka Number Two, portrayed by Ricky Gervais. The film stars Ty Burrell as Interpol agent Jean Pierre Napoleon, and Tina Fey as Nadya, a feisty prison guard.

“It’s an old-style caper movie,” says director James Bobin (Disney’s “The Muppets,” “Flight of the Conchords”). “Muppet movies often have very classic movie tropes, and the evil doppelganger—a bad-guy, evil-frog, Kermit-the-Frog look-alike—seemed like such a fun premise for the Muppets’ next film.”

We chatted with Producer Todd Lieberman and Costume Designer Rahel Afiley about the process of bringing The Muppets back for one more adventure on the big screen.

First Up was Todd Lieberman the Producer. We had to know if there any other elements from old movies in this new film? I was getting the impression that this film was like the Great Muppet Caper and I’m happy to say it’s not according to Todd.

Well, there really aren’t, you know, in the same way that the Rainbow Connection featured in the first movie I won’t say what song, but, there will be some version of a song you might be a familiar with that might appear somehow in this movie.

So not robbing banks?

Well the movie really is a heist movie. It’s basically Ricky’s character, Dominique, partners up with a green frog who looks strikingly like another green frog we know. He’s broken out of a Russian prison. He swaps places with Kermit, takes his spot in the Muppets and Ricky’s character, Dominique and this character, Constantine, go around basically pulling heists. They’re close to theatres where the Muppets are performing so they’re basically framing the Muppets for all these different heists they’re going on.

Spoiler alert. Is there a happy ending and a possible wedding?

There’s a happy ending. Possibly a wedding.

The Muppet movies always have amazing cameos. I of course wanted to know if he could spill any beans as to who we could catch in the film.

I always feel like as a producer I’m always begging everyone to do everything. We have the Muppets and people love them, thankfully so. There’s a good in there. We had a whole list of people who we wanted and a whole list of people who wanted to do it and we were just kind of, you know, tailor made some roles for people who we felt might be appropriate. I think at the end of the day, we really want a lot of these to be surprises ‘cause I think the great part of the cameos is when you’re watching a movie and you have no idea what’s coming and all of a sudden there’s this famous face who might seamlessly blend into the scene or might be completely opposite of what you think the scene’s gonna be. So there’s a lot of those and we run the gamut from Grammy Award winning song musicians all the way to Oscar winning actors and everything in between. So it’s gonna be a very eclectic, interesting mix of people who would never otherwise be in a film together.

What is the criteria for a celeb to make it into being in a cameo?

Be Human and famous.

I knew Tom Hiddleston makes an appearance so I of course wanted to know if there are any homages to the Avengers?

Who’s in the movie? Tom who? No comment.

Will we see any new Muppets in this one?

You will, actually. I mean one of them is Constantine who is a character we never introduced before. And he looks a lot like Kermit but he’s not a Kermit. He’s got different mannerism, different voice, different vocal range and there’s a couple of Muppets who weren’t in the first movie I believe, but may have been in other past shows but we don’t create a new Muppet like we did Walter in the first other than Constantine.

We finished up with Todd and then chatted Costume Designer Rahel Afiley.

We had to know if the Muppets have a say over their costumes?

It’s usually my responsibility with the director. I mean obviously we try to keep in line with what they have to puppeteer these things, so we go with the lighter fabric when we can. You know, try not to make it heavy. We try to be respectful that way but they don’t really get too involved.

How many costume changes are there?

Do you mean Piggy? We’re really just talking about Piggy here. More than anyone including humans I think it’s like 23. It’s like 20 times more than any human.

From what Todd and Rahel have told us it’s sure to be one epic Muppet Movie!

MUPPETS MOST WANTED opens in theaters on March 21, 2014!

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