With the runaway success of “The Lego Movie” – $200 million globally, and counting – it’s no wonder that Warner Bros. is eager to make a follow-up right away. In February this year, Warner Bros. announced a sequel to their hugely popular movie.
“The LEGO Movie” directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller won’t be sharing the director’s seat this time around. Instead, they’ll be back as producers on the project instead. Who’s taking on the job then? None other than “Robot Chicken” director and Emmy award winner Chris McKay. Of course, he’s not completely new to the LEGO franchise as he was the animation director for “The LEGO Movie”.
Details on the plot for “The LEGO Movie 2” are still kept under wraps at the moment although word has it that Michelle Morgan and Jared Stern are already writing a treatment for the next instalment. The script is expected to be ready by year end.
We can, however, let you (you crazy LEGO fan you) in on a little secret. Just one.
While they both initially laughed at the idea of getting Marvel (yes, the comic) to work with them, they didn’t immediately dismiss it. At first, Phil Lord said, “Marvel seems to be doing fine on their own,” to which Chris Miller added, “They don’t need LEGO to make their movies successful.”
But Phil Lord later continued, “It’s really hard to convince a company, especially business affairs, to do something, because it would be cool or fun. It takes a lot of effort.” and Chris Miller concurred, “In ‘The LEGO Movie’, definitely, there were a lot of behind-the-scenes legal and business affairs wrangling to get a lot of the stuff we had in that one.”
In “The LEGO Movie”, one of the lead stars of the animation film was Batman, which didn’t involve much legal affairs because Warner Bros. now owns DC Comics. So, a Marvel collaboration does seem unlikely. But let’s take into consideration that Marvel is now owned by Disney and Disney did allow characters from another of their recently high profile purchases, Star Wars, to be featured in “The LEGO Movie”.
Would Marvel be willing to license their characters to DC for one big tongue-in-cheek animated extravaganza? Phil Lord admitted, “We hope so. Hopefully it will be like another ‘Roger Rabbit’ situations where the companies say..’Of course, we’d love to be a part of this’ but..who knows?”
Note: 1988’s “Who Framed Roget Rabbit” broke new ground by having the iconic Disney cartoon characters and Warner Bros appear together for the first time, with Bugs Bunny sharing a scene with Mickey Mouse, and Donald and Daffy Duck playing a memorable duet. “Who Framed Forget Rabbit” was a product of Disney’s sibling company, Touchstones Pictures.
Wishful thinking for us fans? We’re keeping our fingers crossed. We’ll leave you now with the extremely addictive “The LEGO Movie” theme song:
The tentatively named, “The LEGO Movie 2” is slated for a 26th May 2017 release.
