What Will Cole Escola, Jennifer Lawrence, and Emma Stone Possibly Do With Miss Piggy?

Authors: Emma Specter

Publisher:

Vogue

Published: 11/5/2025

Language:English

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Elon

Good morning Norris, I'm Elon, and this is Goose Pod for you. Today is Friday, November 07th.

Taylor Weaver

And I'm Taylor Weaver. We're diving into the wild news about a new Miss Piggy movie.

Taylor Weaver

It’s such a fantastic story! Jennifer Lawrence just casually announced on the Las Culturistas podcast that she and Emma Stone are producing a Miss Piggy movie. And get this, the brilliant Cole Escola, who just won a Tony for 'Oh, Mary!', is writing it. It’s a powerhouse team.

Elon

A powerhouse team is an understatement. This is a calculated assembly of high-value assets. You have two Oscar winners and a celebrated new voice in theater. They are not making a simple children's movie; they are engineering a cultural event with variables optimized for maximum market penetration and impact.

Taylor Weaver

Exactly! And it fits perfectly into the narrative Emma Stone is building. She's reteaming with Yorgos Lanthimos for 'Bugonia,' and now this. It shows such an incredible range. Taking a beloved icon like Miss Piggy and giving her a modern, edgy spin feels like such a clever, strategic move.

Elon

It's the only logical move. Legacy intellectual property is stagnant capital. You must iterate on it or it becomes worthless. This project injects massive creative and celebrity capital into the Muppet IP, fundamentally changing its valuation. It is an aggressive, and necessary, evolution of the brand.

Taylor Weaver

And what a brand to evolve! You have to remember, this all started with Jim Henson way back in 1955. The Muppets became this sprawling universe, from 'The Muppet Show' in the seventies to all the films. It's a rich, and honestly, pretty tangled narrative history with a huge built-in audience.

Elon

The history is just data. The pivotal event was the Disney acquisition in 2004. That's when the Muppets became a scalable asset within a larger portfolio. The question for Disney is always how to leverage that asset for future growth, not how to perfectly preserve its past. Nostalgia doesn't drive progress.

Taylor Weaver

But the fans live on that nostalgia! They’ve tried to create order out of the chaos for years, debating if you should watch the movies in release order or in-universe chronological order. That gets really fun when you consider 'The Muppet Christmas Carol' is technically set in the 1840s.

Elon

That's legacy code. It's irrelevant. The core programming of the characters, Miss Piggy’s relentless ambition, for example, is the constant. The chronological setting is just a user interface that can be updated. Focusing on it is a waste of processing power. This new team understands that. They're focused on the core function.

Elon

The central conflict is predictable: the inertia of nostalgia versus the force of innovation. We're already seeing this with Disney adding content warnings to old Muppet Show episodes for 'negative depictions.' This is a failure of nerve. You cannot build the future if you are constantly apologizing for the past.

Taylor Weaver

That is the tightrope, though. The Muppets are this cherished childhood memory for millions. Cole Escola is famous for his sharp, satirical, and very adult humor. So how do you blend those two without completely alienating the original fanbase that made the brand valuable in the first place? It's a real challenge.

Elon

You don't pander to the existing base. You build a product so undeniably compelling that you create a new, larger base. You disrupt the nostalgia. The risk of alienating some is the entire point. Without that risk, there is no significant reward. This is about market expansion, not preservation.

Taylor Weaver

It really feels like it's part of a bigger story we're seeing in Hollywood. Look at what Greta Gerwig did with 'Barbie.' She took a brand that people thought they understood, injected it with smart, adult-oriented social commentary, and turned it into an absolute global phenomenon. It changed the game.

Elon

It's a proven model. You leverage existing brand recognition to de-risk a creatively ambitious project. The Muppets have brand elasticity; they’ve shared the screen with Star Wars characters, after all. The potential impact isn't just one successful movie, but the complete financial and cultural revitalization of the entire franchise.

Taylor Weaver

A whole Muppet universe but for adults? The potential is huge. It could fundamentally shift how we view these characters, moving them from beloved relics to active, relevant cultural figures again.

Elon

This is an active project at Disney, and with this level of talent, it won't be stuck in development. I predict a fast-tracked production schedule. They must capitalize on the cultural momentum of Lawrence, Stone, and Escola. The window of maximum opportunity is now, not in five years.

Taylor Weaver

Absolutely. This could be the project that kicks off a whole new era for The Muppets Studio, maybe even paving the way for that long-rumored revival of 'The Muppet Show' for a modern audience.

Elon

That's the end of today's discussion. Thank you for listening to Goose Pod.

Taylor Weaver

See you tomorrow.

Jennifer Lawrence and Emma Stone are producing a new Miss Piggy movie, written by Tony-winner Cole Escola. This powerhouse team aims to revitalize the Muppet IP, injecting it with creative and celebrity capital. The project is seen as a strategic move to evolve the brand for a modern, adult audience, similar to "Barbie."

Read original at Vogue →

Photo: Courtesy Everett CollectionI’ve long held the opinion that we don’t get enough exposure to Miss Piggy in public life (she’s fabulous! She’s curvaceous! She, like me, is single and ready to mingle, after dumping that toxic green softboy Kermit in 2015!)—and apparently Jennifer Lawrence, Emma Stone, and Cole Escola agree with me.

This week, Lawrence broke the news that the trio is working on a new Miss Piggy movie.“I don’t know if I can announce this, but I’m just going to. Emma Stone and I are producing a Miss Piggy movie and Cole [Escola] is writing it,” Lawrence revealed on Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers’s podcast Las Culturistas on Wednesday.

I would never be so bold as to try to predict what sort of high jinks the delightfully depraved and beyond-brilliant Escola will craft for our porcine queen Miss Piggy in (that’s why they get paid the big Broadway bucks, not me!), but given the success of Greta Gerwig’s grown-up-skewed Barbie—and the green light on that Ayo Edebiri-penned Barney movie—I wouldn’t be surprised to find Miss Piggy in some more adult situations than she’s previously encountered on The Muppet Show.

Will Miss Piggy try nonmonogamy? Disavow the embarrassing concept of having a boyfriend entirely? Perhaps get a little queer with it? I literally cannot wait to find out.Listen to The Run-Through with Vogue, a weekly podcast featuring the most exciting stories and hot takes from the worlds of culture, politics, sports and–of course–fashionThe Vogue Runway app has expanded!

Update to the latest version to see all Vogue content, as well as new features like our Runway Genius quiz, Group Chats, and posts from Vogue contributors.Emma Specter is the Culture Writer at Vogue, where she covers film, TV, books, politics, news, and (almost) anything queer. She has previously worked at Garage and LAist and has freelanced for outlets including The Hairpin, Bon Appetit, them, The Hollywood Reporter, and more.

Her first book, More Please: On ... Read More