It’s no secret that Jim Henson’s Muppet army is raring up to make a big comeback. In March of ‘08 we found out that Forgetting Sarah Marshall duo Jason Segel and Nick Stoller would be writing a new Muppet movie for Disney.

After that, we also found out that a slew of other plans were in motion as well, including TV specials, merchandise, and music albums. In case you missed it, you can catch up on all Muppet plans here and now (Read: It’s Not Meat, It’s Not Puppets … It’s The Muppets & They’re Coming Back Big!).

At the time, it sounded like Segel and Stoller would actually be handling the directing duties of the movie as well — we knew that they could pull it off after seeing their work with the Henson-made Dracula puppet and their song “Dracula’s Lament” — but that’s not the case. It’s being reported that James Bobin, who co-created the popular HBO series Flight of the Conchords and helped Sascha Baron Cohen to create his multiple personalities — including Ali G, Borat, and Bruno — has now been brought in to helm the next Muppet movie.

Disney chose Bobin over Phil Lord and Chris Miller, who recently brought us Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, while Bobin chose Muppets over the Judd Apatow-produced Bridesmaids. Along with his many mentioned co-creations above, Bobin also wrote and directed many episodes of both Conchords and Ali G. He was once attached to direct The Heartbreak Kid before the Farrelly brothers took it over…probably a smart move on his part.

The report mentions that the details of the movie’s plot are not being shared at the moment, which makes us wonder what we can actually expect. Since discovering Segel and Stoller’s involvement, we’ve heard of two possible plots. The first seemed most likely and would have Gonzo blowing the entire movie’s budget on the opening scene, leaving the group needing to cheap it out for the duration. This one sounded correct due to the fact that we were told that the title would be The Cheapest Muppet Movie Ever Made. The other storyline rumored involved the Muppets fighting to keep an oil tycoon from destroying their local theater to get at the oil below. With neither the title or plot confirmed in the announcement of Bobin as director, who knows what might have been changed or altered or completely wiped clean.

[Soruce: Variety]