Previously, reports had The Lies of Locke Lamora and Hotel Translyvania writers Kevin and Dan Hageman attached to script the project, which as early as last Autumn was being suggested as a family comedy mixing both live action and animation. It is not yet clear whether the Cloudy pair will be adding their own treatment to the Hagemans’ original script idea, but The Hollywood Reporter announcement implies that the pair’s artistic vision, and the way they developed Cloudy was very important to the success of their pitch at the Lego convention in Fremont (called Bricks By The Bay magically):
One winning component that convinced Lego and Warners that the duo was up to the task was their work on Cloudy. They took a 32-page book, developed a story and characters and used their unique sense of humor to turn it into a family movie that also played to adults. The 3D animated adaptation of the children’s classic book grossed more than $243 million worldwide and garnered numerous nominations last awards season.
If it’s the directors’ adaptation skills that have impressed Warners and Lego, perhaps the Hagemans are indeed still on board. Regardless of that, Lego will have an impressive directorial team in place provided they dont hit any snags: the work they did on Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs was extremely impressive, and having it considered alongside Pixar projects in terms of success can only be further testament to that. The fact that Cloudy was also considered enough of a bankable project to be released early to the 3D Blu-Ray format before it is even remotely close to being available to mass audiences speaks volumes of how Sony think of the film.
Limited information exists on the project, though back in December Collider ran an interiew with producer Dan Lin which gave away about as much as we are likely to find out before any official announcement is made:
I don’t want to give away too much about the story just yet until we publicly announce it, but I will tell you what you mentioned…what’s great about Lego is the worlds. There’s all these different worlds. Space, pirates, Viking world, so it allows a director to play in a lot of different worlds. What it also… naturally the toy doesn’t have any characters as you know besides the licensed product, there’s no character. There’s a spaceman but there’s no personality to the spaceman. And that’s intentional because when Lego designs its toys they want you as the player-the child- they want the player to bring and create the character themselves.
So that’s what we’re working on with the movie right now. I would say there are several Lego characteristics that we’re trying to build into the movie. Their company motto is only the best is good enough. So they’ve raised a very high bar for the movie. Something else we’ve talked about with them is never the same toy twice. You know, with Legos you build per the instructions and then you break it apart and build something else on your own with your own creativity. So, for us, Superglue is evil in the world of Lego. It’s all about building what your mind wants you to build, what your imagination allows you to build.
Thanks to the same interview we know that the film-makers won’t be aiming to reinvent the toy’s image by introducing a Tarantino style story arch:
(It will be) most likely PG. It hasn’t been sited but most likely PG. The challenge for us is, as you know, the Lego toys are geared to boys 5 to 12 and we’re trying to make a movie that can appeal to all audiences and so that age up Lego, while still retaining what younger kids love about Lego.
Now, finally, I’m not one for rumours, but curiously, Wikipedia may have inadvertently started off a mini rumour frenzy thanks to including this line about the star of Nickelodeon’s iCarly:
The film starring Nathan Kress portrayed the human owner of Lego.
Obviously, Wikipedia can’t be trusted, thanks to their open-door contributor policy, and the odd past-tense use in the sentence seems to imply that someone has taken the liberty of adding their own details. It hasn’t stopped Kress fans speculating on the fan-forums: if I had to add my own two-penny-worth, the Kress connection would sort of point towards a Small Soldiers style deal with him playing the toys’ owner, Andy-style. But, then this isn’t one of those rumours that looks to have real legs, so speculation is perhaps a little premature.
