Maya Rudolph joins Melissa McCarthy in The Happytime Murders

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

Brian Henson's long in the works film THE HAPPYTIME MURDERS will be a bit of a BRIDESMAIDS reunion, as Maya Rudolph has signed on to star alongside Melissa McCarthy in the puppet murder mystery. 

In addition to playing the lead, McCarthy is also producing the film with Henson, Jeffrey Hayes, and Ben Falcone, and is working on revising the script. The screenplay was originally written by Todd Berger, based on a story he put together with Dee Robertson. Erich and Jon Hoeber also did a revision before McCarthy came on board.

THE HAPPYTIME MURDERS tells the following story: 

The puppet stars of the iconic TV show The Happytime Gang are some of the biggest celebrities around. But off-camera, the family-friendly cast leads the kinds of lives that would make a tabloid writer blush. When the Happytime Gang stars begin to be mysteriously murdered, two mismatched detectives – one a type-A, take-no-prisoners human with a secret and the other a crass, hard-drinking puppet with a connection to one of the victims – must put aside their huge differences to stop the killings and catch the culprit, all the while trying to resist the temptation to murder each other.

McCarthy will play the human detective working the case. Details on Rudolph's character have not been revealed.

When I first read the synopsis for this project (which Henson has been trying to get off the ground since 2008), I wouldn't have imagined that McCarthy would end up playing the human detective. I was thinking more of a modern Humphrey Bogart or Robert Mitchum type. But I'm willing to go along with McCarthy being the hard-boiled dick, and I don't mind the film being a BRIDESMAIDS reunion, since I think BRIDESMAIDS is one of the best comedies of the last ten years at least.

STX Entertainment will be releasing THE HAPPYTIME MURDERS into theatres on August 17, 2018.