We’ve been hearing a lot about this new Muppet movie that’s on the way, and it started with word that Forgetting Sarah Marshall star and director Jason Segel and Nick Stoller were writing the script.

There’s been a lot of back-and-forth on the Walt Disney Company project since then, including the hiring of Flight of the Conchords creator and writer James Bobin to direct the film. Now comes word of the first major non-Muppet casting for the movie, and it will be none other than Segel himself.

Segel is the perfect casting for the human lead of a Muppet movie — which we’ve heard would be called The Cheapest Muppet Movie Ever Made, but it’s unclear whether this is still the case or not. He’s made it very clear in the past that in writing this movie, he wanted to revisit the Muppets of old; the Muppets of the ’80s that many of us grew up with. With a love of the characters like that, you know he’ll have the most fun in helping to really bring out the best movie.

Though an official synopsis has not been released yet, visible scripts have lead us to believe that Segel will join the Muppets in trying to prevent an evil oil tycoon from destroying their theater to get at the oil that waits underneath.

[Source: Heat Vision]