VIDEO: The Muppets return

Actor Jason Segel has brought the Muppets back to the big screen for a new generation of youngsters.

The puppet characters created by the late Jim Henson are everywhere in popular culture, but they haven't starred in a film together since the 2005 made-for-TV movie The Muppets' Wizard of Oz and have been absent from theatres since 1999's The Muppets in Space.

The Walt Disney Co. acquired thefranchise in 2004, but the colourful puppets languished until Segel stepped forward with a script for their newest adventure, The Muppets.

Segel is better known for his role on How I Met Your Mother and for writing the hilarious, but distinctly adult, Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

But he was a hard-core Muppet fan and knew there was a generation of nostalgic adults who grew up watching The Muppet Show and would be keen to introduce their kids to their favourite Muppet characters.

It wasn't always a smooth ride. As CBC reporter Eli Glasner reports, some of the original puppeteers sat out The Muppets, saying it was not true to the spirit of Henson's creation.

In the film, Segel and Amy Adams play a small-town couple who are determined to reunite the Muppets. Once they do, Kermit and friends set out to save their old theatre from a greedy oil tycoon.

The Muppets opens in theatres Wednesday.

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