Is he a man, or is he a Muppet? Jason Segel seems to have made his decision. While we heard last week that a follow-up to the awesomely revivified **Muppets was now in the planning stages, Segel has confirmed to Collider that he won't be involved.
"It’s true but it’s totally amicable," Segel says. "My goal was to bring The Muppets back. I did what I set out to do, and now I wanna pursue more human-related projects. All I wanted to do was to set the stage for them to do whatever they wanted. I'm sure I'll return in some capacity here and there, but that was half a decade of my life, five years of hard work. I'm ready for a little puppet break.”
The thing is, he's quite right. As welcome a presence as he was in The Muppets, Jason was careful not to make it The Segel Show. The stars were Kermit and co., as is only right and proper. No human interloper has ever continued through more than one Muppet movie, and whatever is planned for the future, the Muppets' anarchic non-template to date probably dictates that it won't be a straight-up sequel.
The "safe hands" Segel mentions are Nick Stoller and James Bobin, although they're only committed to screenplay duties thus far, and there's no indication yet of whether Bobin will direct again.
We'll next see Segel in Jeff, Who LIves At Home, out in the UK on April 20.