The Muppets was one of the best films of last year. An amazing mix of nostalgic respect, unrelenting optimism and brilliant songs that rank among the very best in the franchise. A sequel to such a successful film is inevitable.

The Vulture is reporting that the deal for said sequel has already been made, but one key element of the first film is thus far absent:

[Jason Segel] won’t be returning to the keyboard. Segel, a star of How I Met Your Mother — now in its eighth season — has a burgeoning film career, and Disney insiders tell Vulture that between his commitment to the CBS sitcom, his other feature-writing efforts, and promotional work for Five Year Engagement (due out this coming April) and Judd Apatow’s This Is Forty (in December), there won’t be time to collaborate on a Muppets sequel.

This only means he might not be apart of the writing stage, but with Nicholas Stoller (his original co-writer) and director James Bobin signed on the original flare should still be present. The news also doesn’t mean Segel couldn’t star in the sequel either, so it is possible this is only a minimal, semantics based departure.

So good, potentially great, news for Muppet fans out there, but we hope once they move forward with the movie they bring back Bret McKenzie too. His song stylings fit the Muppets perfectly.

That’s right. You heard it here last. It seems that the newest film featuring our favorite Henson classics The Muppets is yet another “plan for the left to bad mouth affluent businessmen” as the film’s main antagonist is an evil oil baron.

According to a report (yes, they felt the need to do an entire segment on this) from Fox Business, Jason Segal’s Muppet film is guilty of negatively portraying a simple business owner in the form of Chris Cooper’s “Tex Richman”, an evil baron who’s set on destroying the Muppet studios to drill for oil.

The fact that Fox, or anyone for that matter, would think that it’s news that The Muppets, a creation of Jim Henson, is just now taking aim at the aptly labeled 1%, is just preposterous.

Note that the news report barely mentions the existence of Statler and Woldof, who were doing the “old, rich, white antagonist” act before this reporter was able to walk. Take a look at the downfall of modern journalism in true form after the jump, and catch The Muppets in theaters now, or the oil barons of the world win.

It turns out even decades of laughter through the form of hundreds of felt puppets can’t beat the Kristen Stewart pregnancy movie. After having one of the most intense marketing campaigns that Disney has ever executed for The Muppets, Breaking Dawn Pt. 1 still managed to beat the film in the box office by over $10 million during the holiday weekend.

The vampy melodrama got the #1 spot for the second weekend in a row with $42 million this weekend, while Muppets (which made $42 in total since it opened on Wednesday) was only able to pull in an estimated $29 million. It looks like vampires really are more popular than singing frogs and pigs. Shame.

Also hitting theaters this weekend, Sony’s Arthur Christmas fell flat with an estimated $12.7 opening weekend. Speaking of falling flat, Scorsese’s Hugo had an even weaker opening, as it came in 5th place with just over $11 million.

These films could very well do better as we draw closer to the holidays, but don’t expect to see much in the form of sequels for these family classics. Those films may not have performed as well as they could have, but what did was the Weinstein’s My Week with Marilyn which pulled off just over $2 million for its first weekend.

It takes a pretty big milestone for the Henson Company to decide to introduce a new a new Muppet. They introduced Pepe the King Prawn back in 1996 with the launch of the Muppets Tonight TV series, and that may just be the last time we’ve seen a new Muppet join the gang. Until now.

With Jason Segal’s new Muppets script comes a brand new Muppet named Walter, the world’s biggest Muppet fan, who wishes nothing more than to visit Muppet Studios with his big brother, played by Segal. Consider this character a bit of a surrogate for Segal’s love of Henson’s work and the craze which was and still is The Muppets.

We’ve got a brand new clip for you, in which Walter and his brother Segal sing about their beloved hometown and why they wouldn’t need anything outside of it.

Take a look at the clip after the jump, and be sure to check out our other two clips that we brought you this week, and race out to the theaters as The Muppets hits theaters today.

Some of our favorite heroes from yesteryear have their opposites. Whether it’s Captain Planet and Captain Pollution, He-Man and Faker or even Superman and Bizarro, our favorites always had an antithesis to their heroicism.

That’s exactly what we’re going to get this Thursday when The Muppets hits theaters. While our favorite gang of singing frogs, bears, pigs, and the such are forced out of the entertainment industry, it’s time for a new gang to take form. That gang? They’re called “The Moopets.”

Consisting of Miss Poogy, Foozie the Bear, Roowlf, and a Janice and Kermit look-alike, the team wanted to pick up the slack where that other musical act left off in the 90s.

We’ve got a brand new clip for you today in which Miss Piggy and her Muppets take on Miss Poogy and her Moopets. As you can imagine, sparks fly.

Check out the clip after the jump, and make it back here every day for more Muppets clips leading up to the film’s release on Thursday.

There’s no hiding that we’re pretty big nerds for The Muppets here at The Flickcast. We’ve posted about it only a few times but none of the past links have done justice like today’s. Submitted to you is artist Michael De Pippo, who has brought us sheer brilliance in some retro concert posters done for the official Muppets house band, Dr. Teeth & The Electric Mayhem.

A simple idea, yet completely original on its own. Here’s what De Pippo had to say about his idea.

My idea was simple; create a vintage concert poster for each band member (Dr. Teeth, Janice, Sgt. Floyd Pepper, Zoot and Animal). Using clean, crisp vectors, negative space and few colours, I wanted to keep them as simple and stylized as possible; reminiscent of retro posters from back in the day.

So before you completely combust with anticipation, check out these custom posters after the jump. According to De Pippo, each poster will be available up on Etsy very soon, so keep an eye on his blog and Twitter for updates on that. In the meantime, check out the full collection of these character posters after the jump.

Welcome to another edition of On the Radar where we delve into all corners of the entertainment, tech and geek Internets for news, views and whatnot that may have escaped our regular coverage during the week. Let is know if we missed something interesting.

Let’s get started!

• One of our favorite video game fanfilms of recent history, Fallout: Nuka Break is now an even more awesome web series. Enjoy it!

• Want to know what the Futurama characters would look like if they were real and in 3D? Check out these haunting clay busts of Zoidberg, Nibbler, Farnsworth, and Leela.

• Looking for that awesome party beverage for the long weekend? Why not bring it back to the 80s with a home replication of Hi-C’s Ecto-Cooler!

• Fans of both The Muppets and Doctor Who will both be entertained for hours and may have an exploded brain after seeing this mashup of the two universes.

In the coming months, you can expect to see tons of cross promotion between our favorite Muppets and new, hip, pop culture icons of today as we prepare for the release of Jason Segel’s upcoming Muppets movie due out this November.

With that, their brand new soundtrack, The Green Album, fans of the original Muppets get some of their favorite songs covered by modern rock and alternative bands like “Mahna Mahna” performed by The Fray, “Our World” performed by My Morning Jacket, and the original “Muppet Show Theme” sung by OK Go.

We’ve seen OK Go do some wacky videos in the past, but we’re not getting them in full-on Muppet action as they perform the cover of “The Muppet Show Theme” with the full cast of the Muppets.

Check out the video, including the very meta “nightmare ending” at the end, pick up The Green Album in stores and on iTunes now, and see The Muppets in theaters on November 23rd.

For a little over a month now, we’ve been getting teased with posters and fake teasers for Jason Segel’s upcoming fanboy dream come true, a brand new Muppets movie. For the longest time, we didn’t even know what the film would be called, as names like The Most Expensive Muppet Movie Ever Made and others to that effect were thrown around.

It looks like Disney has settled with the idea of simply The Muppets. Here’s the premise.

When Walter, the world’s biggest Muppet fan, and friends Gary (Jason Segel) and Mary (Amy Adams) discover the nefarious plan of oilman Tex Richman (Chris Cooper) to raze the Muppet Theater, they help Kermit reunite the Muppets to stage The Greatest Muppet Telethon Ever and raise the $10 million needed to save the theater.

The film has got just about everything a true Muppet fan would want, and now we’ve got it all in one awesome trailer. Check it out after the jump, and catch The Muppets in theaters November 23rd.

For those who have been waiting for their first glimpse of the brand new Muppet Movie trailer, it’s here!….sort of. Disney is getting a bit tricky with their first trailer for the film by disguising it as a campy romantic comedy starring Jason Segel and Amy Adams called Green With Envy.

It’s actually quite brilliant of Disney, if they can pull something like this off (which they will). We can only imagine why they’d want to uncover the film this way, except for the possibility that the film’s name is still in debate. The original title was proposed as The Greatest Muppet Movie Ever Made, which has later been rejected by the studio. We just hope Green with Envy isn’t the film’s final title. Here’s the “synopsis.”

Love struck meets star struck when a small town couple (Amy Adams, Jason Segel) head to Hollywood and discover their dreams of hitting the big time may cost them the one thing that matters most – each other.

Those who feel like Segel won’t be able to capture the original spirit of The Muppets, know that this trailer has it all from self-referential humor, to full choreographed musicals, to Sweetums!

We don’t want to ruin any more for you, so be sure to check out the trailer after the jump, and catch “Green with Envy” in theaters on November 23rd.

Hard to believe, but it has been over 10 years since we have had a theatrical release starring The Muppets. That film was Muppets in Space and had a pretty stellar (no pun intended) cast for 1999 with names like Jeffrey Tambor, David Arquette, Andie MacDowell, Ray Liotta, and Rob Schneider joining in the felt wackiness.

Hard to believe it, but it looks like Jason Segel may actually be able to top that cast with the list of cameos for his upcoming Muppets film, tentatively titled The Greatest Muppets Movie Ever Made.

Just to drop a few names, the film promises to have appearances from Emily Blunt, Zach Galifiniakis, Neil Patrick Harris, Ed Helms, Jack Black, Danny Trejo, Amy Adams, Ricky Gervais, Katy Perry, Donald Glover, Whoopi Goldberg, and dozens of other names.

Needless to say, that title may just fit this film. The very first poster has arrived for the unnamed project, and much like the tagline in it, the film is much closer than you think, as the current release date is set for November 23rd of this year.

Check out the full poster after the jump, and be sure to keep it here as we bring you more news on the upcoming film.