Which makes no sense. For modern Sesame fans, it'd be like a Sesame film with no Elmo(tho to me that'd be a dream come true)
To me it's literally shocking and disheartening to hear that Pepe is absent from not just the main core, but perhaps the whole movie. Is Segal just ignorant of the existence of this huge main character? Did Disney and the Muppets team decide to erase the last decade of history? Did Bill Baretta ever say "um, excuse me guys?"
Pepe is not a third or second tier character. He's one of the main core.
Well, that's the whole kind of thing that happens when an "outsider" writes something. Jason Segel has proven he's a true Muppet Freak but by the same token, until this project, he's not been among the Creative PTB behind the Muppets. So regardless of whether the person in question is a total unknown or a major star in Hollywood with lots of clout, if any freelancer writes something for the Muppets who isn't someone who's done stuff for them before, all such scripts are essentially a form of "fan fiction" (with this being the rare example of one that gets to be put to life) and once given the greenlight has to be filtered through the actual people who make up The Muppets Studio to make sure it meshes with the brand and that characters don't do anything wildly out of character or that Muppets that are part of the current cast that the writer either wasn't as familiar with or cared to write for or both don't get ignored. Remember the whole decision to even get Deadly in the film came from the director who was more of a Muppet Freak and knew the various characters even more than the writers - and even he's a newbie.
So i'm sure people like Jim Lewis, Kirk Thatcher, Lyelle Breier, etc etc all had their opportunity to look at Jason's drafts and give their input/suggestions in regards making sure the brand they've spent years with fully meshes with the vision of the freelancer.
Which may mean someone like Pepe ends up with a bigger role than the original draft or if they felt it was okay for him to take a smaller role this time out or somewhere in between (giving Pepe four lines instead of three). At least The Muppets are a big enough cast to where it's natural that even major characters will have smaller parts in a given project (hey, each character has their own "life", vacation time, babysitting problems, stuff like that - this movie just might "happen" to take place during a window of time where Pepe was away partying with Ricky Martin) Heck, of the six Muppets that currently have their own "rooms" at Muppets.com, Animal basically had one "line" in LTS, and Fozzie was absent from the first of the two Studio DC's.