Kissy kissy! Miss Piggy is getting a movie—here's what we know and why it's long overdue

The notorious P.I.G.G.Y. is ready to return.

Good news, she's back! Miss Piggy is returning to the big screen with a feature film all about herself from Academy Award-winning actresses Jennifer Lawrence and Emma Stone attached as producers, plus Tony Award-winning Oh, Mary! writer and lead star Cole Escola writing the script.

Lawrence broke the news during an episode of the Las Culturistas podcast with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. "I don't know if I can announce this, but I'm just gonna," the Die My Love actress said. "Emma Stone and I are producing a Miss Piggy movie and Cole is writing it."

Rogers's and Yang's reaction represented every gay person in the world, as shown by Bustle in the following Instagram post.

A few hours later, on that same Wednesday, November 5, Lawrence appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and spilled even more tea about this Miss Piggy movie currently in the works.

Jimmy Fallon asked, "I heard you're working on maybe a possible film about Miss Piggy."

"I am," Lawrence confirmed, adding that the idea came from a friend of hers during lockdown and the peak of "cancel culture." The actress went on, "Both things were kind of happening at once. We were all locked up in our rooms. Naughty people were being locked up in prison."

"Miss Piggy is a feminist icon," Lawrence remarked. "It would be so funny if Miss Piggy got canceled."

The Silver Linings Playbook and Hunger Games actress quickly clarified that the idea of Miss Piggy being canceled was simply a starting point, not the actual premise of this upcoming film. "But it got the wheels turning," Lawrence said. "So I started kind of producing it."

Stone joined as co-producer upon being asked by Lawrence to board the project. Escola was also picked to write it. "And they're perfect," Lawrence said about Escola penning the script the script.

The origin story: A pig-star is born.

Miss Piggy had a very mindful, very demure Hollywood debut in 1976 in the chorus of The Muppet Show, but it didn't take long for this diva to stand out as a superstar and begin her life as a femme fatale, leading lady, and bona fide showgirl.

"Miss Piggy used to be, in the very first year of the show, just a nondescript pig puppet that we had originally used prior to The Muppet Show, in a half-hour pilot called Sex and Violence," Frank Oz — who originated Miss Piggy's voice, personality, and character traits — told The New York Times in 1979. "There was a bit in that pilot with a whole bunch of pigs and she was just one of the pigs."

Oz (nope, no relation to the Wizard!) continued, "But in one rehearsal, I was working as Miss Piggy with Jim, who was doing Kermit, and the script called for her to slap him. Instead of a slap, I gave him a funny karate hit. Somehow, that hit crystallized her character for me — the coyness hiding the aggression; the conflict of that love with her desire for a career; her hunger for a glamour image; her tremendous out‐and‐out ego."

The persona: A three-dimensional diva.

In the 2017 documentary Muppet Guys Talking, voice actor Frank Oz outlined how he developed Miss Piggy into a three-dimensional character. "She's really a truck driver underneath," he said. "She has an autograph that's all curlicues. She had to practice that for weeks." Oz also remarked that Miss Piggy is funny because of the pain she is clearly masking.

What came through, however, was a "high-maintenance diva" (via Smithsonian Magazine) that audiences got to know and fell in love with. Over the course of a career and presence that spans five decades, Miss Piggy has been recognized as a feminist legend, an LGBTQ+ icon, and a Hollywood showgirl.

The feminist legend.

In 2015, Time published an op-ed from Miss Piggy authentically declaring that she is, indeed, a feminist pig. That same year, Gloria Steinem awarded Miss Piggy a Sackler Center First Award from the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, as reported by The Washington Post.

Lawrence also called Miss Piggy a "feminist icon" during her aforementioned interview on The Tonight Show, in which she discussed the upcoming film centering Miss Piggy currently in the works from coproducer Stone and writer Escola.

The LGBTQ+ icon.

Miss Piggy has also been widely embraced as a cultural fixture, fierce ally, and bona fide icon by people in the LGBTQ+ community.

From being described as "very much a drag act" on the Puppet Tears Podcast, being the subject of a tongue-in-cheek essay by Max Mosher titled "Miss Piggy Turned Me Gay," and even appearing on the iconic Reading Challenge on RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars 6 with high praise from Mama Ru herself, Miss Piggy has been getting her 10s across the board from gay people ever since she first rose to superstardom.

Drag performers, in particular, have always shown their love and adoration of Miss Piggy. And many of them still do!

In 2025, Miss Piggy was embodied by Nina West for a performance of "Never Before, Never Again." Later in the year, none other than Drag Race season 17 star Hormosa Lisa attended the Primetime Emmy Awards in full Miss Piggy drag — and she even brought Kermit along for the red carpet.

The Hollywood showgirl.

In the late 1970s, Miss Piggy reportedly outsold merchandise in comparison to any other character in the Muppets franchise. A few years later, People had Miss Piggy as a cover star and declared that she was "the sex goddess of the 1980s."

In 1990, Miss Piggy announced on The Today Show that she was separating from Kermit the Frog. Three years later, Miss Piggy declared on CNN's Larry King Live that she was living in a "domestic partnership" with Kermit.

When the Muppets received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2012, the name on everybody's lips was Miss Piggy, as the most groundbreaking character in the franchise to earn that accolade.

Miss Piggy has appeared, performed, and/or collaborated alongside artists such as Lady Gaga, Dolly Parton, and Elton John, among others.

Five decades later, Miss Piggy has also appeared on TV shows such as Fashion Police alongside Joan Rivers, The View with Whoopi Goldberg, The Masked Singer as a guest judge, Watch What Happens Live playing "Plead the Fifth" with host Andy Cohen, and even on The Wendy Williams Show as the icon, the legend, and the moment herself.

Miss Piggy has published books that ranked in The New York Times best-selling list, released original music, and starred in over a dozen films for screens big, small, and mobile.

And guess what? This pig-star has also appeared as a special guest on several award show ceremonies, like the Academy Awards and the Primetime Emmy Awards. In other words: When it comes to Miss Piggy, the limit does not exist.

The creator: Jim Henson.

Jim Henson, who coined the term "Muppet" as a portmanteau (the first letter in "marionette" substituting the P in "puppet"), is the legendary and widely acknowledged creator of the Muppets franchise overall.

Since 1955, Henson took his creations — and creative ambitions — to a wide range of mediums, from film to television to music to literature to live entertainment to theme-park attractions. No matter how challenging the times were, Henson constantly found ways to keep the spirit of the Muppets as pure and playful as possible.

RELATED: Jim Henson Idea Man is streaming on Disney+.

Henson unfortunately passed away in 1990. But his legacy, particularly through The Jim Henson Company (originally named Muppets, Inc.), carried on and kept expanding the Muppets franchise beyond the creator's wildest imagination.

The mother of a pig: Bonnie Erickson.

Bonnie Erickson isn't acknowledged as often as others for her contributions to the creation of Miss Piggy, but those in-the-know have long documented her work and credited her alongside Jim Henson and Frank Oz.

A story titled "Miss Piggy Has a Mother: Everyone's heard of Jim Henson. It's time to give Bonnie Erickson her due." was published on The Cut in June 2024. In it, Erickson is described as "curly-haired and quick-witted, lives in Brooklyn Heights, where evidence of the 82-year-old's influence can be seen in every corner of the apartment."

In 2008, the Smithsonian Magazine ran an illuminating interview with Erickson in which she discussed her work with the Muppets franchise — and Miss Piggy specifically. "Bonnie Erickson designed and built the inimitable Miss Piggy in 1974 for an early Muppets television special, produced by Jim Henson," the publication wrote.

When asked if a real-life person/celebrity inspired Miss Piggy, Erickson recalled:

"My mother used to live in North Dakota where Peggy Lee sang on the local radio station before she became a famous jazz singer. When I first created Miss Piggy I called her Miss Piggy Lee — as both a joke and an homage. Peggy Lee was a very independent woman, and Piggy certainly is the same. But as Piggy's fame began to grow, nobody wanted to upset Peggy Lee, especially because we admired her work. So, the Muppet's name was shortened to Miss Piggy."

The voice and soul: Frank Oz.

Frank Oz is the widely-acknowledged originator of Miss Piggy's voice, a personality, temperament, and soul as a character.

Oz was the originator and defining performer of Miss Piggy for more than 25 years — performing as the character in The Muppet Show and giving her a full personality makeover starting in the second season of the original 1976 TV series.

(As previously referenced, Oz's last name has prompted fans joke about and/or earnestly ask if he has any connection to the fictional titular character in The Wizard of Oz, or if he chose this as a stage name for show business. Nope! Frank's last name is just Oz, really.)

Oz was the performer behind Miss Piggy in all of the original films in the Muppets franchise. Additional voice work from Oz included Fozzie Bear, Cookie Monster, Bert, Grover… and one of the most iconic puppeteering characters in the history of cinema: Yoda, who first appeared in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back as a Master Jedi who trained Luke Skywalker to face Darth Vader in a battle.

Yes, you are reading that correctly. In case you didn't know, the voice actor behind Miss Piggy was also the original voice actor behind Yoda in the Star Wars franchise.

Oz reprised his role as Yoda in seven subsequent Star Wars films: Return of the Jedi (1983), The Phantom Menace (1999), Attack of the Clones (2002), Revenge of the Sith (2005), The Force Awakens (2015), The Last Jedi (2017), and The Rise of Skywalker (2019).

The owners: From Henson to Disney.

The Walt Disney Company announced the acquisition of The Jim Henson Company in February 2004, which came with high-profile assets like the Muppets attached to the sale. In other words, the Muppets franchise was solely controlled by Henson's company until 2004. Since then, Disney has been completely in charge of the franchise.

Interestingly, even though Bob Iger's tenure as Disney CEO has been notorious for the acquisitions of Pixar in 2006, Marvel Entertainment in 2009, Lucasfilm in 2012, and 21st Century Fox in 2019, he had nothing to do with the purchasing of The Jim Henson Company in 2004. (That was a decision from his predecessor, Michael Eisner, as Iger only became CEO a year later, in 2005.)

The cultural legacy… with legs for more.

When you constantly live The Life of a Showgirl, you don't have to start living The Life of a Showgirl.

Since Lawrence's announcement of the upcoming Miss Piggy film written by Escola, audiences have been locked-in for what appears to be a Renaissance era for the diva. The truth, however, is that this Brat never left; she's continued to bring absolute Mayhem to every stage and screen, and fans are still begging for more.

Kermit the Frog has been asking Miss Piggy to Hit Me Hard and Soft with her karate-chops. Through her Guts and her Rebel Heart, Miss Piggy pioneered the Thank U, Next mantra decades ago. She is Future Nostalgia herself, with a dash of Melodrama to spice things up.

Long live the P.I.G.G.Y.