Neary two years ago, we learned that Phil Lord and Chris Miller, the director's of this month's comedy 21 Jump Street, had been hired by Warner Bros. to make a mainstream Lego movie. Now that "Jump Street" is about to hit theaters, it appears this will finally be the duo's next project.
The thought of another movie based on a toy property had few people excited, but when Lord and Miller got on board, suddenly the prospect of "a Lego movie from the directors of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" became that much more appealing. In the time since they first became involved, we've heard things such as "if Michael Bay catpured Henry Selick to make a movie for him" and that everything from water to explosions would be done with Legos.
In a recent press junket for "Jump Street," the filmmakers fielded a number of questions from movie news outlets about the possible movie, and the two have not been coy. The basic plot they gave to /Film was as follows:
“It involves many worlds. Basically, the least qualified Lego characters in the universe having to keep the world from being frozen together.”
Miller said the film's tentative title isLego: Piece of Resistance. From the brief description, the idea of live-action people being involved doesn't seem entirely off-base, but less likely than it was when the project first got going. These character appear to value the ever-changing nature of the Lego universe, so being "frozen together" sounds dastardly indeed.
And that's hardly the end of the details. Speaking to the "all-Lego" style of the animation, Lord said:
“One of the challenges that we’ve given to everybody, is that they can’t move any differently than the real minifigs, so they have to have like a punching fight where they can only do this and this.”
Our bet is "this and this" refers to locked-joint motion in which the arms can only rotate up or down, which is comical, but also true to the nature of Legos. /Film also rounded up quotes the two gave Collider, such as mentioning that the film's characters will not be entirely standard Lego minfigs, or original characters either. They suggest there might be appearances from characters involving some of the properties that Lego holds such as "Star Wars" or "Harry Potter."
They also told Coming Soon that the stop-motion lego movies that people make in their basements served as part of the inspiration for their artistic choice, only “with a much bigger budget and better resources. Better lighting and cool camera moves and stuff.”
Both Lord and Miller expect things to come together for the film in the next few months, including casting. With that in mind, a 2014 release is within the realm of possibility.
