Filmmaker Chris McKay is one of the most exciting new voices working in cinema. He began his career
as an intern on John Hughes' 'Uncle Buck' before directing a number of music videos, commercials
and taking on a range of positions across all departments within the industry.
This would eventually lead to McKay becoming an editor, and then director,
of the cult tv show 'Robot Chicken'. During work on the show's fifth season, McKay was
hired by Disney to assist in the development of a new anime show.. During this time, the production
designer on the Disney pilot would suggest to McKay that he meet with the film-making duo;
Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. The pair had completed 'Cloudy with a
Chance of Meatballs' and were set to make 'The Lego Movie', as well as rebooting a
feature-length take on '21 Jump Street'. McKay would meet with Lord and Miller and
was hired as a third director to supervise the animation.
As Lord and Miller travelled to New Orleans to prep '21 Jump Street', studio confidence in 'The
Lego Movie' was beginning to fade, resulting in the project losing its 'green light'.
The studio wanted it to be a movie simply just for kids,
whereas the filmmakers felt they had material that held a distinct multigenerational appeal.
For the lead role of the Lego man; 'Emmet', Warners weren't sold on the idea that a
yellow-headed Lego mini-fig with limited facial expression could carry a movie and emote what the
script needed. The studio suggested that Emmet's face have teeth, or a tongue, or animatronic eyes,
or any one of a bunch of other bad ideas. McKay's job now, was to get Warner Brothers
to regain their faith in the project and to recommit to 'The Lego Movie.'
McKay would meet with the studio head. He was asked
''Why are you in my office? I hired two other guys to direct the thing, who are you?''
McKay would re-pitch the movie, he explained that the timeless yellow mini-fig would work,
and working alongside the animation and FX company 'Animal Logic', the team would create an animation
test where Emmet would 'audition' for his role. The test was a success,
Emmet got the job and Lord and Miller's 'The Lego Movie' was now back on track.
3 years later, on February 7th, 2014, the movie opened to critical and commercial success,
grossing 468.1 million dollars worldwide against a budget of 65 million dollars.
The Lego Movie earned a bunch of award nominations, and wins, and would lead to Warners
greenlighting a whole universe of Lego Movies. Lego Batman, voiced by actor Will Arnett,
had appeared in 'The Lego Movie' but it was now time for the Caped Crusader to
headline his own adventure. Chris McKay was the immediate
first choice to make the film in what would be his solo directorial debut.
Arnett returned to lend his voice talent to Batman and Bruce Wayne.
Zach Galifianakis would star as The Joker; Michael Cera was cast as Robin The Boy Wonder
a.k.a the orphan Dick Grayson; Rosario Dawson would play Barbara
Gordon and Bat Girl; Ralph Fiennes would voice
the role of Alfred Pennyworth the butler and Jenny Slate would feature as Harley Quinn.
In amongst the familiar villains was The Riddler, The Penguin, Poison Ivy and Mr Freeze and there
was a welcome return for Harvey 'Two-Face' Dent as voiced by Billy-Dee Williams.
The plot would see the Dark Knight save Gotham and it's citizens from an evil blackmail plot
enforced by the Joker. Once our hero has saved the day.. Again.. He returns to his life of
quiet solitude.. But little does he realize he'll soon face his greatest threat: Not the
Joker trying to conquer the city, but rather the prospect of letting people into his life..
Batman's biggest fear involves forming relationships with others – he’s afraid of
getting close to people and then losing them. Batman banishes the Joker to the Phantom Zone,
a prison for the universe’s worst super villains.. But, with the help of Harley Quinn,
The Joker and the rest of the rogue's gallery escape.. To restore law and order to Gotham,
and to defeat his villainous enemies, Batman must learn to work as part of a team
and, fortunately, there are others willing to help him.. The movie asks one question: Can the
childish and vainglorious yet ultimately deep-down sensitive Batman ever discover true happiness?
To help the brooding vigilante overcome his philophobia and avoidance issues,
Alfred coerces Batman into adopting a teenage orphan named Dick Grayson
who becomes Batman’s sidekick and adopted son. 'The Lego Batman Movie' was a critical and
commercial success, attracting great reviews and taking 312 million dollars at the box office.
On December 5th 2018, as 'The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part',
also featuring Lego Batman's third appearance in the Legoverse, was weeks away from release,
Will Arnett was asked about a sequel he said, ''... At this point, I don’t want to rest on my
laurels. You want to find a way to take what we know about Batman and tell new stories,
so that people aren’t bored and don’t think, 'We’ve seen that already.'
There’s always talk about further films, but it depends whether there’s an appetite for it and
how people respond to this movie. Hopefully, people enjoy it. And if it feels like there
is still room to grow, then we’ll do that.'' McKay was asked on twitter by a fan whether or
not a sequel to Lego Batman was in the works.. McKay replied, 'Working on that right now.'
And so, the previously unannounced project was now seemingly... announced?
During the promotional tour for Lego Batman, McKay would speak of some ideas for a sequel that
had already been toyed around with, he said, ''... I think if we do a sequel, there’s a whole
thing I want to do with all the people who played Batman. Get as many as will agree to do it - get
all their voices in somehow. There’s sort of ‘next level’ stuff that I think we could do, once you
start to establish this world and the characters. And I also love the Rogues Gallery so much;
that’s why I wanted to cast it with a bunch of these people – so that if there is a sequel or
spin-off movie – we can do a crazy ‘Oceans 11’ or ‘Suicide Squad’ movie. With the Rogues Gallery,
Batman and the Super Friends, or get the other people who played Batman to play a
significant role in the movie somehow. There’s a bunch of things that I’d love to do ...''
As work progressed, not much news was released. McKay was now also officially
attached to direct a 'Nightwing' live action movie for Warner Brothers.
The Lego cinematic universe had by now already expanded
with the already released Lego Movie sequel, and a 'Lego: Ninjago' movie.
The performance of The Lego Movie 2 was now considered underwhelming.
The original Lego Movie had earned 469 million dollars worldwide on a 60 million dollar budget
and it had taken 69 million dollars in its opening weekend alone.. but, its follow-up
had now only taken 34.1 million dollars.. The 50 percent drop off saw the film equated
with other franchises like 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles', 'Star Trek' and
'Independence Day' which had experienced a similar box-office downturn.
With 19 direct-to-DVD Lego movies, 19 Lego shorts, 14 TV specials and 16 TV shows available
to stream.. It was feared that the special once-in-a-lifetime moment that The Lego Movie had
signified had now lost a little of its allure.. Meanwhile previously, 'The Lego Ninjago movie'
sadly also hadn't done as well as was hoped for. The film itself,
if you're a fan of the material and the brand, was brilliant.. The numbers however, weren't.
One by one the nails were slowly being hammered into the casket of future Lego movies.
Despite the fact that Batman was a marquee name, the fear of further high-profile, yet
under-performing, sequels now loomed large in an ever-changing landscape of 'theatre versus
streaming' as executives tried to figure out the potential appeal and unique-selling-point of what
a sequel could offer, without simply re-treading the same ground covered in the original.
All of this would factor in the decision-making process when it came time for the renewal of
rights to continue making Lego movies. In December 2019, behind the scenes,
several studios began to make bids as the clock started to run down on the Warner Brothers deal.
Leading the pack were Universal, who, while characters from The Lego Movie and Lego Batman
would stay at Warner Brothers, had plenty of their own properties to play with... Perhaps,
'Lego James Bond versus Lego Jason Bourne'? Maybe a 'Lego Back To The Future?' 'Lego Jurassic Park?'
'The Lego Mummy?' 'Lego Kung Fu Panda?' 'Lego E.T?' - the potential is endless and it was easy
to see why the rights to make movies out of the iconic colourful bricks were in high demand.
Then, in April 2020, the deal was officially signed and Universal now had a five-year
deal to generate Lego Movies based on their own intellectual properties plus original ideas.
Chairman of the studio, Donna Langley, said in their statement,
''To partner with such an iconic brand that remains relevant and is constantly evolving
allows for creativity in storytelling. We’re thrilled to start building out the next chapter
of Lego movies together as they continue to inspire curiosity and innovation.''
This now meant that Lego Batman 2 was off the slate.
Chris McKay would later reveal that Dan Harmon, the creator of 'Community' and 'Rick and Morty'
and Michael Waldron, who is a protégé of Harmon, working with him since 2014
and serving as a writer/producer for the fourth season of "Rick and Morty",
had together written a full first draft of the screenplay that was to be titled
'Lego Super Friends' The news lit up the internet
for a day as McKay had told Collider that, ''... Dan and Waldron had done a first draft of
the script that was really great. It was truly epic...both from an action standpoint and from a
story standpoint. The structure was 'Godfather Part 2', a story about Batman’s relationship
to the Justice League 'now' as well as the formative moments of the Justice League 'then'..
The studio was leery of Lego Batman being an actual Batman movie so I was constantly told
to hold back. Audiences, and subsequent movies like 'Into the Spider-Verse', proved them wrong.
I would have quadrupled down on making it as much of a real Justice League movie with lots of jokes,
cameos, intersecting storylines, references, etc - it would have been a very dense movie as humanly
possible. We had lots of great voice actors from The Lego Movie and Lego Batman. The villain was
going to be Lex Luthor and OMAC. There’s more, of course, lots of Aquaman, Wonder Woman, Lois.
There was also going to be a big crossover at one point in the movie that you can only do
in a Lego movie. I’m sure you can guess what it was. The thing that will probably
never happen in a live-action movie.'' I'm guessing McKay was hinting at a DC/Marvel
crossover, which sounds brilliant. Batman' password to the Bat-Cave was 'Iron Man Sucks' so,
who wouldn't want to see Batman finally coming face to face with Tony Stark's Iron Man?
Or see Superman meet The Incredible Hulk? In my opinion, whether you're 5 years old
or a 105 years old you've got to admit... it did sound an excellent prospect.
Back in a 2017 interview, McKay had been asked, ''Can we expect a LEGO Batman Movie 2? If so,
do you have any teases about what that might tackle story-wise?''
At the time McKay answered, ''... We are still talking about it.
Lots of ideas. A Justice League / Super Friends movie. A Rogue’s Gallery Movie.
One of the things that I’ve not talked about in the making of The Lego Batman Movie is our plans
for the Justice League scene. Two things were cut from it that I wished we could have done.
The first was a scene where Batman, who was ticked off that his ''friends'' didn’t invite him to the
party, destroyed all of their ''rides'' so at the end of the movie when Batman has changed and
needed people, it made sense that he couldn’t call them. He poured sugar in the gas tank of
Wonder Woman’s invisible jet, he used the crystal from Superman II to take away Superman’s powers,
and he overfed Aquaman’s seahorse... ... The second is a little sadder. In the
original conception of the scene, Batman shows up and discovers his friends have
thrown a party and didn’t invite him. To make it worse, playing at the party
is…Prince and his band. Prince would have been the one to say the line ''Check your
spam folder'' when the others insisted that it was an oversight not to invite Batman..''
Walrdon would share the cancelled script's cover page on twitter, saying, ''Loved this project
and especially our title page.'' The cover page stated that not only
was the project based on the Super Friends cartoon that first aired in the seventies,
but also, unexpectedly, the Paul Thomas Anderson movie 'Boogie Nights.'
The next day Waldron: would say, ''... I saw that McKay did a, probably,
better job of describing it than I would. That was a fun project; it would have been really cool. It
was a great, sort of like, time-hopping story. As McKay said, a little bit of Godfather II,
a little bit of Boogie Nights. Really about the friendship between Batman and Superman and trying
to investigate what went wrong between those two. I liked it; it was fun to write Superman. To get
to write, kind of, a real wide-eyed version of – the Dirk Diggler version of Superman. It was fun.
That would have been a good one. Harmon had a lot of great Martian Manhunter jokes in there.''
And so, at the present time, there isn't much else to say,
The Lego Batman movie was an hilarious, entertaining,
joke-a-second, loving homage to Batman lore.. It was expertly constructed and voiced and
it's highly anticipated sequel is now yet another project that creative people spent time developing
only to see business decisions guillotine the project in it's development phase.
It's not outside the realm of possibility that Universal and Warner Brothers could come to a
financial agreement that would allow the sequel to develop. It's unlikely, given that Warners now
have their hands full with their live-action adaptations of 'The Batman' 'The Flash' and
'Black Adam', but, it's not unthinkable given the inbuilt audience who would welcome such a move.
To quote Bruce Wayne himself.. ''Everything's impossible until
somebody does it.'' Thanks for watching!
A Lego Batman sequel but it was, gonna be called like, 'LEGO SUPERFRIENDS' and it was gonna
be about Batman's relationship with Superman, The Justice League, and uh, the structure, uh,
and not that I'm saying it has the quality of a movie like this, but - The structure
was Godfather Part 2, where you are, you're in the past with Batman, young Batman, young Superman,
forming the Justice League, err, you're seeing a very different version of Batman at that time,
you're seeing a very interesting version of Superman and Super, and Lois Lane and the world.
And then at the same time, you're dealing with their relationships now,
their fractured relationships now while they're trying to deal with Lex Luthor
and OMAC and a bunch of other Super Villains. It was gonna be a really fun, special movie.
Wait, wait! Batman back in.. Forget to drop the mic.