Jesus Christ, three more Lego movies? Yes, three additional films about the beloved Danish interlocking blocks are being developed at Universal. Presumably riding high off the unending enthusiasm surrounding animated Pharrell propaganda, Piece By Piece, Universal and Lego are connecting for three movies about the barefoot’s worst enemy: Lego blocks. Oh, and proving that the Dark Universe isn’t dead, the films will be live-action.
The names associated with these projects range from the unsurprising to the depressing. First, Jake Kasdan will follow the all-but-certain success of Red One with a Lego movie with four screenwriters attached. Per Hollywood Reporter, D Train scribes Andrew Mogel and Jarrad Paul will pick up where The Pickup writers Matt Rider and Kevin Burrows left off. Previously, Kasdan made a biopic parody so effective that it ruined biopics.
After four years of being shuffled around Warner Bros. and Disney, Patty Jenkins finally has another project, a fucking Lego movie she’s writing with Geoff Johns. Jenkins, who produced one of the few unequivocal hits of the Snyderverse, was rewarded for making a Wonder Woman sequel people didn’t like with four years of development hell on a Star Wars movie that never happened. To be fair to Wonder Woman 1984, it was hard to enjoy anything in December 2020.
Finally, Joe Cornish, director of Attack The Block and the underseen, utterly charming The Kid Who Would Be King, will rewrite Heather Anne Campbell and Simon Rich’s draft of a different Lego movie. The names in this one are most intriguing. Cornish always seems tied up in projects that don’t make it over the finish line, such as Snow Crash, Starlight, and, perhaps most glaringly, a sequel to his breakout, Attack The Block. Campbell and Rich are two of Hollywood’s best comedy writers, so if we had to put our money down on any of these being worthwhile, this would be the one. Maybe we’ll get a new Joe Cornish movie for the first time in five years.
But even still, is this really where we’re headed? Live-action Lego movies? How many fish-out-of-water stories about a Lego man who leaves Lego world can one studio make? Now that superhero movies are no longer a safe bet, Universal wants to make Warner Animation’s mistake of producing more Lego movies than anyone could reasonably want. Have we learned nothing from Ninjago? Nothing from Playmobil: The Movie? This is indeed a Dark Universe.
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