Summary

• The LEGO Movie went through a long and challenging production process before becoming a major box office hit in 2014.
• The sequel, directed by Mike Mitchell, did not perform as well financially despite the return of key cast like Chris Pratt and Elizabeth Banks.
• The animated film took nearly three years to complete, using a simulation of stop-motion style without the tedious traditional process.

The LEGO Movie became one of the most successful movies of 2014 but had a long and tedious period of production to get to that point. Directed by the dynamic directing duo of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, The LEGO Movie was the first installment of what would become the modern LEGO movie franchise that shares close parallels with the popular LEGO video games. The original LEGO toy was invented back in 1934 and has evolved into one of the most profitable toy products ever created. The success of The LEGO Movie prompted a directed sequel in 2019 and the spinoffs The LEGO Batman Movie and The LEGO Ninjago Movie in 2017.

While there are no recent updates on the production status of The LEGO brand was acquired by Universal from Warner Bros. in 2020, which led to speculation that Adam and Aaron Nee (The Lost City) could direct a new LEGO project.

The LEGO Movie's Development Began In 2008 & The Movie Was Finally Released In 2014

Production started in 2011 once Lord and Miller signed on in 2010

Development of The LEGO Movie began in 2008 with a simple idea from film and television producer Dan Lin (Sherlock Holmes, It, Aladdin). According to The Hollywood Reporter, Lin set up a meeting at the LEGO headquarters in Denmark in 2008 after watching his young son play with the iconic toys and seeing the creative potential in the product for a blockbuster movie. While Lin saw a clear path toward conceptualizing what would become 2014's The LEGO Movie, the execution of bringing the vision to life turned out to be far more complicated and challenging.

The LEGO Movie went into development in 2008, with Lord and Miller g on to write the screenplay and direct the film in 2010. Fresh off the successful 2009 release of Cloudy with a Chance of Metaballs, Lord and Miller completed the first draft of the film in 2012 with the working title of Lego: The Piece of Resistance. At one point, Chris McKay of Robot Chicken acclaim was considered a co-director as well and oversaw the production while Lord and Miller directed their now-classic comedy 22 Jump Street. The cast of The LEGO Movie began working in 2012 to meet the film's early 2014 release.

It Took Nearly Three Years To Animate The LEGO Movie (But Would Have Been Way Longer With Typical Stop Motion)

The animators simulated the classic stop-motion style of "Brickfilms"

The Australian animation studio Animal Logic was brought on by Warner Bros. to animate the film soon after the project was greenlit in November 2011. This created an aggressively paced turnaround schedule for the film to hit its release date of February 2014. The animation style of the film is based on classic amateur stop-motion videos called "Brickfilms" which commonly used LEGO figures as their characters. The LEGO Movie animators were able to take this concept and combine it with more cinematic elements that were emblematic of traditional Hollywood action films and blockbusters.

The animators did not employ the "Brickfilm" approach to shooting The LEGO Movie as that process could have taken close to a decade to accomplish. Instead, the animators were able to simulate the appearance of stop-motion animation without actually going through all the tedious work of the true stop-motion production process. The cast of The LEGO Movie also acted out scenes for the animators to later reference during post-production. The animators spent countless hours perfecting the design of the LEGO-inspired products and building a digital library to develop the world of The LEGO Movie.

How The LEGO Movie's Animation Timeline Compares To Other Stop Motion Animated Movies

The LEGO Movie's animation process took just as long as true many stop-motion projects

Even compared to true stop-motion movies, The LEGO Movie was put together at a fairly common pace for modern animated films. Two critically acclaimed feature films that were shot entirely using stop-motion animation with little CGI, Anomalsia (2015) by Charlie Kaufamn and Isle of Dogs (2018) by Wes Anderson, both took roughly two years to complete production. Some older stop-motion films, such as Coraline (2009), took as many as four years to film. While the laborious work on The LEGO Movie wasn't done in the literal form of stop-motion animation, it still took an army of animators and CGI specialists to create the groundbreaking project.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter