The LEGO Movie 2 won’t be in theaters until 2018, but that sure hasn’t stopped us from receiving a wave of new updates about the film courtesy of writers Phil Lord and Chris Miller. This new update in particular gives us a major story detail about the film as well as little bit of insight into how they’re going about crafting the larger LCU (Lego Cinematic Universe).
(MAJOR SPOILIERS for anyone who hasn’t seen The LEGO Movie)
Recently reported by Collider (and stemming from an interview by Empire), Chris revealed that while he and Lord are definitely on-hand for the screenplay, he doesn’t think that they’ll be back in the director’s chairs. They initially weren’t even going to write the sequel either. That is, until a rather major story opportunity presented itself: “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.”
With that in mind, he revealed exactly what got them excited in the first place: the possibility of revisiting Finn (the kid in the basement during the live-action part of the film) when he’s a tad bit older: “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.”
Yes, you heard that right. The LEGO Movie 2 will take place four years after the events of the first film (and presumably after the events of Ninjago and LEGO Batman). It will be the third major animated franchise to utilize the ‘time skip’ storytelling method, previously employed by the Toy Story and How to Train Your Dragon franchises. It also dashes the hopes of anyone who wanted to see the whole ‘Duplo invasion’ thing play out as a major storyline. Who knows, maybe that could be addressed at some point.
Miller also spoke about the excitement of building the Lego Cinematic Universe brick-by-brick (excuse the pun) and handling all the 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.”
As expected, they’re doing the right thing by recognizing that LEGO can and is capable of housing multiple tones, styles, and genres, much like how they’re capable of having a lot of different sets of toy properties under their belt.
We’ll keep you updated as more news concerning future films in the Lego Cinematic Universe becomes known.
LEGO Ninjago will hit theaters on September 23, 2016. LEGO Batman follows sometime in 2017. The LEGO Movie 2 will be in theaters sometime in 2018, and an untitled LCU film is set to follow on May 24, 2019.
What do you think? Do you approve of the time skip? What are your thoughts on the construction of the LCU?
Edited by: Morgan Stradling
