I adore The LEGO Movie. I even bought “The Special Special Edition” just because it had a few more special features. Whether the spinoffs and sequel can live up to the original is a big question, but Steve recently spoke to producer Roy Lee to get an update on the next three LEGO movies in the pipeline: LEGO Batman (opening February 10, 2017), Ninjago (September 22, 2017), and The LEGO Movie 2 (May 18, 2018). Lee talked about the tone of the pictures, familiarizing people to the Ninjago world, bringing in new characters and more.

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Image via Warner Bros.

When it comes to LEGO Batman, Lee expressed his excitement about fans getting a look at Batman’s world fully realized in LEGO:

What can you tease people in terms of the story and what’s going in The LEGO Batman Movie?

 

ROY LEE: Seeing where Batman lives in full LEGO, the audience will love. Seeing Gotham City fully rendered in LEGO.

 

Where are you in terms of the project?

 

LEE: It’s currently being animated right now because it’s the next movie coming out.

 

Is it a very similar tone? Are they similar in tone or some might be a lot different?

 

LEE: Batman will have the same character choices as he had in The LEGO Movie.

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Image via LEGO

As we previously reported, LEGO Batman will ask if Batman can ever be happy, and it will also bring in other iterations of the character. It will be interesting to see if that includes the Batman v Superman Bats, or just the ones who existed pre-LEGO Movie.

Moving on to Ninjago, Lee explained that it will please fans of the Cartoon Network show:

LEE: Anyone who knows the series on Cartoon Network will be blown away by the look and feel and huge scope of how we’ve expanded the universe of Ninjago.

 

For those who have never seen the cartoon or never seen the show.

 

LEE: It’s like seeing The LEGO Movie in a ninja universe.

Unfortunately, he didn’t go into more detail about what that meant.

Moving on to if we’ll get a bunch of new character for The LEGO Movie 2, Lee acknowledged that they already had more than enough characters to play with, and he’s not even that worried about securing new cameos:

LEE: The first movie we got a lot of cameos, and it’s not that hard to get them to say yes, especially when they already have deals with LEGO. Having Star Wars, you would think would be almost the hardest thing to get, and if we got Star Wars, there’s other things that would be a lot easier.

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Image via Warner Bros.

He also noted that they’ve done some voice recording for the film even though it’s over two years away in order to help the production process:

Have you started voice recording for that movie or is that still too far away?

 

LEE: Oh, we have.

 

Oh, so you’re in it.

 

LEE: Yes, but it’s in order to do certain scenes, it’s better to have the actors do the voices as you’re forming the shape of the movie.

So while Lee didn’t say anything Earth-shattering for any of the upcoming LEGO movies, these were still some nice tidbits, and fingers crossed we’ll start to get a look at LEGO Batman sooner rather than later.

For more on Lee's other projects, click on the links below:

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Image via Warner Bros.