One of the biggest (and best) films of 2014 was directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s animated comedy The LEGO Movie. Naturally, with a worldwide gross of $468 million and wildly positive reviews, both fans and Warner Bros. were eager to see a sequel. The studio put The LEGO Movie 2 in the works rather quickly last year, in addition to setting up its own little inter-connected LEGO universe with spinoff films Ninjago and The LEGO Batman Movie set to hit theaters in 2016 and 2017, respectively. It’s still doubtful that Lord and Miller will direct The LEGO Movie 2, but they’re definitely involved in writing the screenplay for the follow-up. In a new interview, the two spoke a bit about the story for the sequel, revealing that it will take place four years after the events of the first film and delve into how growing up changes one’s point of view, and they also discussed their involvement in the spinoff films. Read on after the jump.
Speaking with Empire, Miller revealed a tiny bit about The LEGO Movie 2 story:
“We were really interested in what happens to that boy who’s in the meta story in the first movie when he’s four years older. When he’s an adolescent how does that change his point of view? And it’s nice to have the characters start in a different place from the first movie. Emmet, for example, was in an existential crisis of having seen another dimension and was questioning the whole point of his existence."
The filmmaker said he doesn’t think he and Lord will be directing the sequel, and while the two initially didn’t want to write the follow-up because they didn’t have anything new to say, Lord discussed what changed their mind:
"We also worried we didn’t have enough time. Luckily, [Chris] McKay and Jared [Stern] and Michelle [Morgan] all worked on the movie a bit in our absence and really cracked the beginnings of a story and got us really excited; excited enough to write it.”
Miller also spoke about the excitement of working on all of these LEGO movies at once:
“We’re writing the sequel right now and obviously producing all the other ones. There’s a challenge to make each one feel like its own thing. Part of the fun is finding people like Charlie [Bean], who’s doing the Ninjago movie, and Chris McKay who did so much on the first film. Each of them have their own distinct voices and ideas for tone. So it will each have its own personality and not just be, ‘Hey, remember that last movie? Here’s another one just like it!' So that’s been a big challenge but so far it’s been going better than I expected."
Lord and Miller are two of the most in-demand filmmakers working today and, assuming continue as they have been in the precursors, they might very well be on their way to their first Academy Award next month. While everyone’s curious to know what they’ll be directing next, it’s nice to hear that they’re still intimately involved in the LEGO universe, ensuring that the franchise that they kicked off doesn’t immediately become stale or familiar.
