It wouldn’t be much of a Muppets movie without a few original songs and last year Bret McKenzie of Flight of the Conchords wrote almost all of the songs for last year’s The Muppets – and has an Academy Award to show for it. Now Collider reports that he is coming back to write new songs for The Muppets 2, which is said to feature a crime caper plot. Though no major stars are attached to the film, Christoph Waltz is in talks to appear as an Interpol inspector. James Bobin, who co-wrote the script with Nicholas Stoller, will direct.

Production is set to begin in January in Pinewood Studios in England for a December 2013 release. No doubt Disney wants to capitalize on the same success it had when The Muppets opened in theaters around the Thanksgiving Holiday. No doubt the studio is looking to avoid the box office onslaught that The Hunger Games: Catching Fire will cause during the Thanksgiving holiday, so a winter holiday release seemed like the second-best option.

As for other competition, well some of the biggest titles to be released in the month of December are The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smuag, Jack Ryan, and 47 Ronin. There is also another Disney flick, Saving Mr. Banks, starring Tom Hanks, that will open that same month. Seeing that the reports have The Muppets 2 and Saving Mr. Banks sharing the same release date of December 20th, it won’t be long before we hear of one of the films getting rescheduled

[Source: Collider]