Any theories on why certain characters didn't make the cut?

I'm sure everyone reading this saw The Muppets. I'm also sure that everyone reading this was excited to see such classic characters as Thog, Behemoth, Link Hogthrob, Dr. Julius Strangepork, Wayne, Wanda, Beauregard, Lips, Uncle Deadly (playing a large role), Nigel( The Muppet Show), Nigel (Muppets Tonight), Beautiful Day Monster, Luncheon Counter Monster, Droop, Mo Frackle, The Mutations, Lew Zealand, and even the Blustering Bellowpane Monster make small roles in the movie. But what do you think happened to other characters? Sure they had Thog, Sweetums, and The Mutations, but where was Timmy, Doglion, or Mean Mama? You can't have the Muppet Show theme song recreated without Timmy. They had Beautiful Day Monster, Behemoth, Luncheon Counter Monster, Mo, and Big Mean Carl, but where was Gorgon Heap, Boppity, or Gloat? And they had Link, Lew Zealand, Beauregard, Dr. Strangepork, and even Wayne and Wanda, but where was George the Janitor, Annie Sue, Mildred Huxtetter, or Baskerville the hound? Preety much what i'm trying to say here is what do you think happened to certain characters?

Well, most of the characters you mentioned were cut back in the first season of the Muppet Show. It would've been cool to see Timmy Monster and Doglion.

Hmm. While I do see your point, they brought back wayne and wanda, who were also cut in the first season. I do agree with your point about Doglion and Timmy. It would be awesome!

Perhaps they simply didn't rebuild every single minor character that only a few Wiki-reading Muppet fans could recognize, let alone name. They had to make room in the budget for things other than puppets.

Yeah, kind of agreeing with Slackbot, it costs money to build puppets. Most of the puppets needed rebuilt. They probably figured that they brought back enough characters for now. I'm sure the full-bodied characters cost a great deal of money to make, which makes it surprising that they even rebuilt Thog and the Mutations.

Think about it, you wake up one morning and are reading the newspaper, "Disney goes bankrupt due to making too many Muppets."

Also, Nigel from Muppets Tonight was in the new movie? How'd I miss that?

(sigh) Well I guess I have been outnumbered. I guess Baskerville will never be seen again.
Nigel was in the crowd scene when Kermit made his little speech. Look by Thog and Dr. Teeth.

Hey, that's not saying that you'll never see any more of them. There's a sequel in the works...I imagine we'll be seeing a few more familiar friends.

Thanks for reassuring me.

They only had an hour and a half to tell a story. Things get cut. Pops had a feature role in The Great Muppet Caper, but joins the background chorus in The Muppets Take Manhattan. Robin and Sweetums are hardly seen too. Beauregard's role was greatly reduced after Caper. It's just how it rolls. "The Muppets" was the best film to include so many characters since the original trilogy.

i think they could possibly rebuld the characters they missed during the last movie for this new movie for next summer

Guess what.... i have a very special secret. You may find it shocking so you may want to be sure you're sitting down before you read further...

You're never going to see every Muppet that ever existed all in the same movie. There's just too many. Even that final grand finale shot during Muppet Movie's closing number...not all the Muppets that were existence at that time were present and accounted for.

But you know something else? Muppet fans like you and me got a huge present with the last film with lots of minor characters we never thought we'd see again rebuilt and showing up. And the film was a success! And you know what happens when people go and see/buy Muppet stuff? They make more Muppet stuff and there's a good chance that some of those Muppets you wanted to see who didn't make the last film's cut may make their way into this one.

ok, I think that just about wraps this up, thank you all for giving me positive insight.
I somehow feel for even creating this thread in the first place

I read that they actually lost the Marvin Suggs puppets, and had to start from scratch for the movie. And I was too concerned about Timmy. It seems that there is such a big gap on the left side of the screen without Timmy in the opening number

They LOST the marvin suggs puppets? That's actually kind of funny if you think about it from the muppaphones point of veiw.
I, too was concerned when Timmy did not appear in the arches. But I figured that maybe in the next movie they'd bring him back.

I don't really understand why everyone's sweating the lack of presence of Miss Mousy and Mildred Huxteter when we had Link do a musical number and Wayne and Wanda making out. Some of us were just glad Rowlf got a couple lines that were more than 2 words long, and the fact Scooter had a role.

I can look past empty arches filled by characters who would have had to have been rebuilt, and the lack of new characters, and ones that are still hereto not recast because we've basically got back everyone who was missing from MCC onwards. And some of the characters we've seen onscreen have never had much of a role before.

Still, next go around, I hope we'll see Rizzo, more Pepe, and Robin. There just wasn't any room in the script for those guys. And a LOT was cut out, lest we forget.

I agree that it was probably because they already spent a fortune on rebuilding Uncle Deadly, Thog, the Mutations, Wayne & Wanda, Behemoth, Beautiful Day Monster and the others.

Thus, they most likely didn't have enough money in the budgets to rebuild Boppity, Gloat, Lenny the Lizard, Baskerville, George, Midlred, Hilda, etc. I, too, am hoping that those folks will pop up in the next movie.

Let's hope that Nick Stoller and James Bobin are reading all this, because they were already very wise to bring back all the long-lost characters that they did revive in the new film and would like them to keep up the good work.

You're right. They weren't all present and accounted for. Fritz was missing.

Don't feel for creating this thread! It was a good idea for one.

Linoleum!

All present and accounted for, except for Fritz!

I can't believe one of the choices was "they found some of them unneccessary to the plot line". You could say that about any of the characters who just show up in the background without lines, in the ending crowd scene and the telelthon opening.

I thought I read a statement from either Bobin, Segel, or Stoller saying that the movie would have "every Muppet you can think of". I can't remember which of the thousands of articles/interviews (and I am sort of exaggerating on the thousands part, but wouldn't be surprised if I am right about there being thousands of articles) it was, but if I am right about what I thought I read, then it comes off as a false alarm. Either that, or they underestimated how many characters we could think of, or they actually couldn't think of many. They do say something in the commentary along the lines of the online fans being more knowledgable, but some things have me puzzled. We know they're big fans of the original trilogy, so they should have been aware of Doglion (for taking that seat), Pops, the Jugband, Gaffer (perhaps... I always felt his little pressence in the Happiness Hotel number was memorable), and all the original characters in The Muppets Take Manhattan (though I don't really care that Beth Bear didn't appear). They recreated the opening, rebuilt most of the large monsters from the opening, must have known who went there, so they must have been aware that people would notice Timmy missing.

I'll have to see if I can find their statement that every Muppet we could think of would be in it. But I think if I didn't see that statement then it'd be more acceptable that a lot of characters didn't appear. I'm not really bummed that we didn't get any characters who only appeared once on the show. On a similar note I've seen official things from The Jim Henson Company that made the claim that every Muppet appeared at the end of The Muppet Movie, but I know that none of the Sam and Friends/early productions characters appeared (Earl Kress confirmed this in his thread about the making of that scene), it's obvious Sweetums wasn't there (because he caught up after the film ended), and pretty much every big character is so big it'd be hard to miss them, whether we're looking for them or not (I am surprised I didn't notice Doglion in the opening scene from TMM until 1998).