Hello and welcome to Development Purgatory.
This is the podcast all about the movies that were never made, the scripts that were never
written, and the ideas that never even made it to the page.
My name is Daniel Kawka and I'm Lexcee Riley.
We are here to talk about toys.
This season is very toy and stop motion.
We're here to talk about stop motion.
Yeah.
We're here to talk about both.
Little Kid Dan is like, this is my dream.
Has happy as moment.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
See, the Venn diagram of like, do one for me, do one for the audience is now a full circle.
Dear God.
Circle.
Now, before we get started, I wanted to ask you.
No.
Did you play with Legos as a kid?
Did you have a Legos set?
I don't know that I would like consider it as a child.
I feel like when we grew up, it was like, girls got duplow box and barbies and like, I
don't know, there weren't like a lot of--
Did you get a polypocket?
I did have a polypocket.
I had a muddy max.
The fuck is that?
The boy polypocket.
Oh.
See?
I liked building stuff, but I remember being like, oh, there's not a Lego set that I'm like
thrilled to build.
Like they were very car-based and now they have like princess castles and not that like,
girls have to play with princess castles and boys have to play with cars.
I just happened to be that girl as a child.
I think when we were roommates, it's probably the most Legos I built because friends.
We put together the friend's central perk set.
I like a Lego.
I just wanted ones that fit my personality.
I recently put together the shire.
Nice.
Yeah, that was expensive.
Uh-huh.
Must be the other thing.
They're incredibly expensive.
They're so expensive.
And then the thing that I remember about the friend's set was that we loved putting it
together.
We had a great time, but then it was kind of massive and like, where do you put that?
Like once it's done.
I don't know that we were like, hey, look at all our Legos.
So it was just like, oh, here it is.
So because we're not like, or at least I'm not like a massive Lego person.
I don't know what to do with it when I'm done building it.
I put the shire on its own shelf.
Well, a dead long story longer.
No, I did not play with a ton of Lego's as a kid.
I remember when I was a kid, we got a lot of Lego sex.
We also got a lot of connects as well.
Now, there's a memory.
I remember 1999 because this is when the Phantom Menace came out.
I had gotten a pot racer.
Didn't see that until I was like 20.
Lego pot racer.
It was so cool.
Yeah.
So whenever I think of the Phantom Menace, like that is where my memory goes is how awesome
that Lego set was.
There were really fun Lego sets.
I think I'm more into it now than I ever was as a kid.
That was a nice trip down memory lane.
And now to go down the lane of these advertisements.
And we're back.
Hopefully all those ads were built carefully.
So what we're going to be doing instantly feels like a test.
Is it?
Really?
Did I study?
You did.
In a way.
I did do my homework.
We are continuing our journey in stop motion animation to talk about Lego animation aka brick
film.
Oh, that's okay.
It was coined by Jason Ruholt.
He was a founder of brickfilms.com, which highly recommend it's a lot of like amateur animators
putting together like short films using Legos.
It's pretty fun.
I think it's fun to watch and I think it's very accessible for younger kids.
Oh, yeah, especially now.
Especially now.
Yeah.
The first known brick film that was released in the early 60s was an Lego advertisement
in Germany, the ad premiered in German cinemas beyond that.
There's really not much known about the ad.
At the beginning of the ad it reads production central or central or spa or something.
It's really hard to read.
It's really, today you can actually see it featured at the history collection of Lego house in
Bulland, Denmark.
The video is also made available on YouTube if you want to check that out.
You saw the first advertisement.
I did.
So since this is an advertisement they wanted to show that they wanted to show like how things
are made.
So like everything is kind of put together brick by brick and you see things like grow.
Yes, yes, yes.
Like you see a boat being built and then it starts to like sail away kind of this idea of like
you're building it and then after you build it your imagination takes over.
Yeah.
In this one, the thing that I noticed was that it is predating a lot of the things that
we've always had.
Like the cars don't look like the cars that we have because you actually have to build
every little component.
There's not all the little helper pieces that we have now.
That was what caught my eye.
I was like, whoa, you have to be even more creative with this.
Yep.
And it was a lot of like basic shapes and pieces that you would put together.
Everything very square.
And then you'd like kind of make a giraffe out of it.
Now the first known amateur brick film that was created by Larcy Hessehn and Henry Kassehn.
They were both 12 and 10 years old.
Whoa, what?
The Danish cousins created a six minute short called it journey to the moon.
It depicts the Apollo 17 mission to the moon and they created it for their grandparents
Golden Anniversary in 1973 and they used a super eight film camera.
It's so good.
When the rocket is landing I guess, they had to use like a firecracker or something and
I was watching it.
I was like, oh, this is a cute little stop motion thing.
Like obviously super eight very dated at this point.
And then the like little firework insert went off and I was like, ah, the way that they
did it knowing that it stopped motion just real impressive.
Yeah, like I really wound it and was like, I know that this isn't the Lego component of
the video, but you're also dealing with like plastic.
I don't I thought that was cool.
Yeah, I mean, they're using anything at the disposal to make this happen.
It doesn't have to be like everything is Lego.
It's like they're just using their toys to make a stop motion video.
Mm-hmm.
But it told the story really, really well.
Yeah.
So since then other independent brick films have been made.
Number one that has stood out is called the magic portal.
It was released in 1989.
This is a 16 minute short that was filmed by an Australian filmmaker.
His name is Lindsay Flay.
The film follows an astronaut on a spaceship who finds and enters a magic portal.
On the other side, he encounters strange slug like creatures who help him evade a two headed
beast which was made out of an excavator model.
The film later breaks the fourth wall when a number of characters escape from the table,
the film is being shot on and they use a shoot to drive around and continue to escape from
the monster and eventually crashing back into the set where we see Lindsay himself having
to clean up the mess that they made.
The film was shot from 1985 to 1989 using a Bullex 16 millimeter camera.
And it was given financial help of $11,000 from the Australian Film Commission.
That is nightmare fuel by the way.
I know that that was probably the original intention, but it loops.
That's boiler room.
But then I also see the influence it has on the Lego movie.
Yeah.
It's genuinely impressive.
And when it comes to the facial features of--
You can tell he had to erase the face on there and he used either a sharpie or a dry
erase marker.
We paint it back on every time.
Yep, just to make that part work.
And the tiny little sand effects.
But yeah, it was a lot of fun to go through and it was very innovative.
Like I said, like them just getting into the shoe and driving around like that.
And you can see how long it is taking for him to film it because as the shoe is like going
across the yard, you can see the sun setting and like the shadows are just getting longer
and longer and longer.
It's a really long journey because a long time for Lego is to--
Yeah, but it goes to show you like even for like that short sequence.
Like it's giving you an idea of like how long it is taking for him to actually have to
sit there and go through it and move everything like little by little by little.
Yeah, that's where I want the time lapse of like just the BTS of him by himself being
bugs bunny.
But it is really neat that we get to see him as well like it crashes and he's like, "Oh,
I filmed."
It's really funny.
At the end he dumps them out of the shoe and then it sort of goes back to the beginning and
that's when I was like, "Whoa."
And that's probably how you feel like when you're doing this is like it's never going
to end.
You're just on this perpetual loop.
Yeah.
So after finishing, Flee sent the film to Lego who appreciated the film and thanked him
with a cease and desist letter.
No way!
For five years of your hard work to be like, right?
Yeah.
Share this with no one.
Yeah.
Flee sent them proof that he had gotten permission from Lego Australia before production
began.
Take that.
But that was ignored.
They were plans to submit it into multiple film festivals around the world.
But the legal actions caused the film to miss multiple deadlines to submit eventually
Lego dropped the charges and the film was made available to be seen.
The film was so great and well known that it's been known as like the first brick film
ever made.
No one has ever seen anything like this.
And because of its widespread popularity, they're like, "Oh, you can actually do something
with these Legos in film."
So like that-
What did Lego itself start as a company?
I debated if I wanted to go down this history not just because I feel like that wasn't truly
necessary to the-
I don't think they history it, but I'm just curious about how long it took for someone
to go, "Hey, I can make a movie out of this."
So it started in 1932.
It went through a lot of different evolutions because it first started as wooden blocks.
Eventually evolved from there.
I think it was like the creative or like the wood shops sun, they got like a plastic mold
injection thing and then like-
That'll speed up the production a little.
Rather than having to whittle each wooden piece.
Yeah.
I like, briefly went through the history, kind of going back and forth.
I was like, "Do I want to talk about it?
It's got to be a dense history."
Yeah, for the story of what I'm telling, I don't think it's fully necessary to understand
where Lego itself came from.
But knowing that it started off as wooden blocks and eventually turned into what it is.
And also it took roughly 50 years for a film to be made from it.
The film became widely popular and would be the top example of what a quality brick film
should look like.
In the Lego movie actually pays homage in the film because the tube that Emmett goes through
to go from the real world into the Lego world, that is actually called the magic portal.
It is, yeah.
Yep.
So fast forward to 2001.
That's amazing.
With a film called Jack Stone.
Oh my god.
Can do will do.
Can do will do done.
I'm going to have that in my nightmares for the next couple weeks.
That is a 20 minute Lego produce short film done entirely in CGI with the help of Art
World UK to animate it.
The film was distributed on videotapes for free to subscribers of Lego Club magazine.
The story is framed around a news report all about the heroic actions of Jack Stone.
He uses his ability to build new machines out of Lego pieces to help rescue people in danger
and stop criminals.
Although the early CGI animation is rough, it did kind of set a president for what CGI Lego
films would look like moving forward.
Toy films like the Barbie Lego overlap of things is strong.
Now a lot of us may not be familiar with Jack Stone, but some of us may associate the CGI
animation with Lego Star Wars or like the Lego Star Wars series.
There's like a bunch of shorts that were made Lego Star Wars.
And you may notice that they will bend and stretch and act like they were made out of rubber
or elastic.
Right.
I guess if you think about the equivalent of like action figures as a reflection to the
real person, a real person doesn't move as stiffly as a toy.
We can forgive this on the fact that CGI animation technology is still like a new technology.
But the fact that like this is the first to like go forward from there.
So that is why I had you watch it.
Not to have nightmare feel.
Yeah.
Can do will do.
It's a rough one to get through.
And I think I told you like you don't have to watch it at regular speed.
You can kind of speed up through there.
I watched it.
I couldn't remember which one you had given me permission to do that.
I was like, I'm just going to commit to the bit the longest one.
Can do will do.
But there is something about that film that I do want you to keep.
A nugget.
Yeah.
One, it started off like this kind of animation style.
But then the idea is that with Lego using your imagination to then take other pieces, build
something new to like innovate or like this idea that this video is kind of there to
like jumpstart the imaginations of children to be like, right?
You can create something new.
The city is flooded.
It's on fire.
Yeah.
Let's just put the building in a big body of water.
Right.
The entire city will flood.
Yep.
Back from the ads.
So we're going to switch gears to talk about Warner Brothers.
In the mid 2000s, WB shut down the Warner Brothers feature animation department after a string
of animated movies did poorly in the box office with the nail in the coffin and being Looney
Toon's back in action.
Hey.
Which came out in 2003.
It's starring Brandon Frazier and Jenna Alphan.
Brandon Frazier just doing his best.
Jenna Alphan of Darmun Greg.
Mm-hmm.
290s icons.
Yeah.
In a 2000s film.
Oh, there it is.
Yeah.
I was like, how did we go wrong?
They weren't in the 90s anymore.
Right.
We waited a decade.
Any animation at the studio was created for a TV or drug to video markets.
The next time that WB dipped their toe into feature animation was with Happy Feet in 2006.
Do you remember who directed Happy Feet?
No.
I don't know that I even have ever seen.
Oh, you haven't seen Happy Feet?
We were a little old for this one.
Yeah, I think we were.
It was a little past our time.
Yeah.
I was old enough to not watch it on my own.
I was young enough to not be watching children yet.
Oh, I always clock it in my brain.
The director of Happy Feet is just because it's George Miller.
Whoa!
The same director of Mad Max.
Of Mad Max.
Mad Max got range.
I know.
Yeah, to think like that's George Miller.
You know, the guy who did babe.
Like Pig in the City?
Uh-huh.
That's George Miller too.
I've got to rethink my entire life.
Uh-huh.
I'm not saying paying when, because babe was for our generation.
Uh-huh.
La, la, la.
Same guy who did Mad Max Fury Road.
In the George Miller cinematic universe.
He almost did a Justice League movie too, which you can check out that episode in our backlog.
So I love that fact.
That's him.
Yeah, my brain's going to be off in George Miller in a while.
I'm going to do that.
Yeah.
So Happy Feet.
Just merely distributed that film, the studio that was behind it, that was Animal Logic.
They were the ones who actually animated it.
Why do I know Animal Logic?
Let's see.
They did it DC League of Superpets, Peter Rad.
There it is.
DC Superpets.
Oh, they helped out on Captain Marvel.
What?
They did stuff for Alien Covenant.
They did a lot of stuff for like Superpets.
So they're like an VFX company too.
VFX, yeah.
Great Gatsby 300, Happy Feet.
Very specific.
Ooh.
They did stuff for the Matrix and Mulan Rouge.
Very specific look.
Yeah.
Like highly saturated look.
In 2008, development for the Lego movie had begun with Dan Lynn and Roy Lee.
Lego had already expanded into the video medium, the first being Jack Stone, which we just
watched.
Can do will do.
They did make a series of direct to video features with Bionicle.
Oh, I remember Bionicle.
Yeah.
They're short using the Star Wars in Indiana Jones IP.
They also licensed their brand to multiple video games.
In fact, the video games studio, which is Traveler's Tale, is the company behind most Lego
based video games.
Now you're talking.
They were then acquired by Warner Brothers in 2007.
And after proving how lucrative the Lego brand was, outside of the toys, Greenlighting
a Lego movie was pretty much a guaranteed yes.
That makes sense.
Yeah.
In 2011, Dan Lynn worked with Kevin Hagueman to help write the story.
Warner Brothers also hired Phil Lorde and Christopher Miller to write and direct the film.
Do you know who Lorde and Miller are?
Again, they sound familiar.
Okay.
The two had established themselves after their show Clone High and Cloudy with a chance of
the Michaels.
The Flimm Miller!
Oh, I love Cloudy with a chance of me, Paul.
Spray on shoes!
They would later go on to make the 21 Jump Street reboot movies.
What the fork?
The Mitchell's and the Machines, Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse, and most recently Project
Hill Mary.
Oh, I really should have known those names.
Yep.
Hold up.
The Cloudy with a chance of me, Paul.
This is our D.
Like one, I loved that book as a kid.
Honestly, one of the best book to film adaptations I've ever seen.
The Flimm Miller.
They did Project Hill Mary?
Yes, they did.
It was advertised on the posters from the minds of Cloudy with a chance of me, Paul.
It's Clone High.
It's a beautiful space age story.
I guess they hung out with George Miller at some point.
We're just like, we just like to pivot.
Talk about rage.
Now to help direct the animation, they got Chris McKay, who's probably best known
for his stop-motion work with Robot Chicken.
To animate the film, they used the same studio that animated Happy Feet, Animal Logic.
There we go.
That's why I brought them up earlier.
And together, they would create the film Lego, The Piece of Resistance.
That is literally the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
Please, wild style.
Betany have of this.
That idea is just the worst.
That's not the final title.
No, that was...
They were like that is too clunky.
We should really rename that.
To the Lego movie.
I mean, it's a cute title, but yeah, it's a bit of a mouthful.
I mean, I get why they called it The Piece of Resistance because that...
Oh, yeah, 100%.
Like that makes perfect sense.
I agree.
I think it's a smart title.
It's just, how do you market that?
It's really hard to market.
But as far as the story goes, it makes more sense than the Lego movie.
Now, when it came to animating the film, it was important to Lord and Miller that they
wanted the look of the film to follow the logic of stop-motion animation seen in prior
brick films.
When the trailer dropped, there was a massive online confusion of if the film was actually
stop-motion or computer animated.
It was indeed mostly CG animated, but the animators at Animal Logic set rules on how the
characters could move, which was basically it could only move how the actual toy was
would move.
The knees and the elbows don't bend, and they don't bend or stretch like we've seen in
other previous Lego CG animation.
They would make an exception by extending or exaggerating bending at the joints, so like
at the shoulders or the neck to help convey emotions.
Right.
Like his head spins quickly or like...
Or like if they need to like look up, they will just like kind of cheat it so that the
head will kind of like come up just a little more.
Hmm.
I need to re-watch that movie.
It was a fun time.
All the elements needed to be made out of Lego pieces like fire, water, smoke, explosions,
clouds, and even the mud on the camera lens.
Yeah.
That's cool.
The idea is that you could pause the movie at any time, and in theory you could recreate
that frame all at home.
Oh, they're geniuses.
To accurately build the sets, the animator is an artist use the Lego digital designer,
which is actually a program that is free to use to anyone so that you can digitally
make anything using every Lego piece that ever existed.
A lot of the times the set pieces were built in real life as a prototype before they were
approved and put into the film.
It's actually really cool to like watch the behind the scenes because you have a lot of
the animators and filmmakers who are like sitting at a table, which is like a bunch of
Legos and there is like actually physically building things together before they're like,
"Okay, this looks really cool.
Let's put it into the movie."
That's the creative job I want.
It's fun.
That's how all development should be.
It should be, but yeah.
And if you look closely at the bricks in the film, you may notice that there is noticeable
wear and tear and even fingerprints of it being handled.
You can actually see on Benny's helmet that it's like cracked.
I actually have some pictures right here.
And I will tell you that Benny was actually modeled after Chris Miller's Space Man toy
that he's had since he was a kid.
That's really cute.
So you can see...
I remember the fingerprint.
I don't remember.
Oh, there is the crack.
I think we saw this in theaters with the tall man.
And I just remember being like, it was really well done because of the fingerprints and stuff.
Yeah.
I mentioned before that the film was mostly in CGI.
The only part that was practically animated was the three minute end credits, which was
done by stupid studios.
Come again?
Stupid studios.
STU.
STO-O, PID.
STO-O, D-O's.
Stupid studios.
Oh, stupid.
I'm not a word.
Which primarily animated for robot chicken.
Oh.
Which kind of makes sense now.
Yeah.
The sequence took three animators in two months to complete.
That's really fast.
Yeah.
In some frames they would have to move up to 150 Lego pieces just for one frame.
That hurts my brain.
It was a smart decision that they made the entire film in CGI.
So in it actually--
Done the math.
So in did the math.
I don't know how they fully calculated it, but if you were to practically animate the Lego
movie, they said that it would take over 10 years to do.
It would still not be done.
It would still be in production.
And it would be over 15 million Lego pieces.
Yeah.
That sounds about right.
That's honestly shorter than I thought it would be.
All the film was in production in 2013, Jeff Robinoff, who was the head of film at WB
figured that it would be best to bring back WB's animation division and rename it Warner
Animation Group or WAG.
Which--
Oh, WAG.
Whenever you see an animated movie now from Warner Brothers, you'll see the big old WAG.
She'll--
Yeah.
Before the movie starts, Robinoff basically stole the Pixar model of story development and
applied it to WAG and created a brain trust with other filmmakers.
It was Lord and Miller.
Along with other filmmakers, there was the duo Glenn Ficara and John Reckola.
Do you know who that is?
Glenn and John?
Yes, because I know where you're getting that with this one.
They made-- I love you, Philip Morris, Crazy Stupid Love.
And obviously they did the pilot episode of What Show?
This is us.
They did their delight.
They are.
And they did six other episodes of This Is Us.
What's going to say?
I know that they did more than one.
Yep.
They also brought on Nick Stuller.
Do you know who that movie is he directed?
Uh, I didn't need to do the Reese Witherspoon, Will Farrell, Ramcom.
He may.
Couragelline invited.
Oh, I think he did.
He was supposed to direct the Cool Aid movie on the studio.
Oh, yes, yes.
But he's also done forgetting Sarah Marshall, the five-year engagement, neighbors, Storks
and Bros.
Ranged.
The Lego movie was a hit in the box office, making well over $450 million.
This whole paragraph is basically for you to nerd out on budget-wise.
Yeah.
So get ready.
Buckle your seats.
Let me grab my glasses and my pen and paper.
The budget for the Lego movie was around $100 million.
Now that included the advertisement, the production only saw about $60 million of that
hundred.
For an animated film, for what seems like a high status film, the budget actually seems
pretty low, possibly in--
$60 million?
I don't know.
That seems pretty accurate to me.
Possibly implying that WB didn't have much faith in the film about Lego.
I don't know that I agree with that.
I feel like $60 million for we're talking about the decade ago.
$24,000?
Yep.
Okay, here's the real producer, nerd.
If you go back to its release, if you go back to when it was in development, add like a couple
more years, we're talking roughly 15 years ago.
$60 million for a movie was a lot.
Now, to put into context, here are some other animated movies from 2014.
Yay.
Yeah.
Big hero six had a budget of $165 million.
Different studio?
In the box office, they made just over $650 million.
How to train your dragon?
Two.
$4,000,000,000,000,000, and in the box office made over $620 million.
Are all of these figures with marketing attached?
I am not sure.
Because you said it's $100 million for Lego with marketing attached.
If marketing is attached, those other films, it's not as big as of a disparities, we think it
is.
Yeah.
I'm a nerd.
Yep.
Mr. P. Body, in Sherman movie, that budget was $145 million, with a box office of $275 million.
I don't remember that movie at all.
Mm-hmm.
There was the penguins of Metagascar.
Yeah.
That was $132 million, and made just over $370 million in the box office.
There's Rio 2.
We don't know exactly, but it was either like $100, $230 million, budget, box office was just
under $500 million.
Box trolls, and the book of life actually had a similar budget to the Lego movie.
But their box office for box trolls, they made $108 million while book of life made only $100
million.
So from that budget, compared to the Lego movie, making $450, just incredibly.
That was the box office was $450?
Yes.
Because the budget was $60 million.
Now there was a movie that was below all of those, only costing $30 million, and that was
the nut job.
But that one made $120 million in the box office.
B, I'm going through numbers in my head and being the visual effects nerd that I am, I
can't decide if it would cost more money for the specific stop motion, but I'm wondering
like you can do more with the Lego movie because you really are regenerating the same shapes
over and over again.
And so basically you're just putting a different skin on all of these characters.
So I actually think this shouldn't have the same budget as the dragon movie that's
that.
How to train your dragon too?
Dragon too needs that because you're not duplicating anything.
Even the dragons all look completely different.
It's a savvy producer to go, okay, we're just re-duplicating shapes and re-skating them over
and over again.
Yeah.
And they're using a program that is free.
They didn't have to like invent anything.
Right.
You don't have to sit and develop.
I mean, they're obviously as a development process, but it's not the same development of being
like, hey, should this dragon have what of the 75 scale options?
A Lego head is a Lego head.
Yep, although you could go into the minute details of just like, does he have a scratch?
Is there a fingerprint or something like that, but that yeah.
Yeah, that's true.
I wonder, I'm such a dork.
I'm like, I bet that they created like scuffs and fingerprints and then could layer those
in.
Oh, I'm sure.
Oh, fascinating.
Yep.
The Lego movie paved the way to what would seem like a successful franchise.
Obviously, a sequel to the Lego movie had been greenlit, but the Lego movie franchise
would continue with what has to be one of my favorite superhero movies, the Lego Batman
movie.
You think you're my greatest enemy?
Yes, you're obsessed with me.
No, I'm not.
Yes, you are.
No, I'm not.
Yes, you are.
Who else drives you to one up them the way that I do?
Bane.
No, we've done that.
Superman.
Superman's not a bad guy.
Then I'd say that I don't currently have a bad guy.
I am fighting a few different people.
What?
According to Dan Lynn, the conceived idea for Lego Batman was it was going to be a family
friendly version of Deadpool.
I can see that.
And when he described the Lego movie, that was supposed to be a family friendly version
of the Matrix.
Whoa.
Which kind of makes sense now?
Yeah.
To direct was Chris McKay, the guy from Robot Chicken.
In an interview with Cartoon Brew, he talked about how he pitched and approached the film,
and I wrote, "I'm a big fan of airplane movies, naked gun movies, and I wanted to do..."
When you said airplane movies, my brain went to like...
Oh, movies you watch in the airplane.
You watched the movie.
"Watching the airplane movies."
It's a big fan of the airplane movies, the naked gun movies.
And I wanted to do something that was fast and funny as that kind of film.
And I also wanted a little bit of heart, find a little bit of earnest, sincere emotions
in the Batman story because I knew that was the only unique way into this character.
I basically pitched the movie to the studio and said that I wanted to make Jerry McGuire
as directed by Michael Mann with a lot of jokes in it.
They kind of let me run with that.
Research in the movie in my head, I guess I was thinking it was basically taking the
Burt Ward Robin and sticking him in the Batmobile with the Zack Snyder Ben Affleck Batman,
or a Frank Miller Batman, and putting these two different energies together.
Somebody who's the grumpiest, dark, grittiest, brutus Batman with the most positive kid.
In 2019, while promoting the Lego Movie 2, the second part, Chris Miller confirmed that
the Lego Batman is from the imagination of Finn and Bianca, the human characters from the
Lego movie.
Oh, cute.
Even though they're not shown in the movie.
For this film, they also use Animal Logic again to do the animation.
Yeah, at this point, Rinson repeat.
Yeah.
In March 2015, it was announced that another Lego spin-off movie was in development, the
Billion Brick Race.
The plot of the film is heavily inspired by the Cannonball Run along with other racing
films.
The tagline of it, it's not about how many bricks you have.
It's about what you do with the ones you've got.
In July 2016, it was announced that Jason Siegel and Drew Pierce were hired to write and
direct the film.
Now, you know who Jason Siegel is.
For getting Sarah Marshall, how I met your mother.
The Muppets.
Yes, we all know who he is.
Oh, for your dead body.
Yes.
I know Pierce, do you know what he has done?
Stuff.
He's done stuff.
He wrote Iron Man 3, Mission Impossible, Rogue Nation.
Wow, smack those two together in a room.
That's fascinating.
Hotel Artemis, Hobbs and Shaw, the Facing for Your Story.
I liked Hobbs and Shaw and I will die on it.
I love that movie, too.
But I don't think you love it as much as this other film, The Fall Guy.
Oh!
I love The Fall Guy so much!
The Fall Guy is so underrated!
They also hired a animation director in August of 2017.
Jorge R. Gutierrez was hired to co-direct, but he left about a year later in February 2018.
Yeah, he kind of like saw the writing on the wall.
It was like, if this isn't going to get made, I got to go out because I got to do a lot
of other stuff.
In December 2019, Gutierrez revealed concept art for the main characters for the film.
And from what we can see in the concept art, it looks like the characters were going to
race through different LEGO worlds.
Similar to in the LEGO movie when they're crashing through different worlds.
And we see a bunch of stuff like that.
It's really hard to see and we're going to post it onto our Instagram, Blue Sky.
You can see the concept art here, but they're going through canyons.
I see one with a castle.
They're kind of going through middle earth.
Has wreck it Ralph Fibes?
Yes, very much like that.
There's a dragon, medieval type world.
It's just like a variety of like what is that we could include.
And I'm sure they're like basing it off the sets that have been made in actual LEGO world.
Gutierrez.
He did confirm that the cancellation of the movie was due to the port performance this
year is later.
So we're going ahead of time right now.
Just because all this is taking place while the other movies are going.
The port performance of the LEGO movie too and the Ninjaga movie is the reason why they
just dipped, canceled everything.
Did not realize there was a Ninjaga movie.
So we will discuss the Ninjaga movie in just a bit.
What I want to do, I'm going to give you the laptop.
What I have done is I have listed the actor's name and the character that they were going
to play and below that is the concept art of what that character was going to look
like.
So tell me who it is, the actor and the character and kind of describe that.
Okay, so we have a female named Jane Dane Draperger with red hair, cool blacks sunglasses.
She has got a biker sort of field her.
She would have been played by Amy Polar.
Okay, we've got a dude with blue hair again similar biker vibes.
Brody Reyes.
Played by Jason Siegel.
Cool.
I'm sensing a big biker feel to all of these, which is really fun.
I mean, it is like a racing rogues movie.
It's a cannonball run.
Yeah, Frankie Reyes, to be played by Mina Masoud.
Awesome.
Like blue pig tails, red, rosy, the riveter kind of feel.
And then we've got good old Tobin.
Ben has a very vanilla vibe about him, white hair, tan suit, cool guy sunglasses though,
played by Aaron Paul.
Tough guy is just wreck it Ralph in a who is the FBI director played by Nicholas Moron.
Oh boy.
Mr. Wonderful has a not so wonderful tone about him actually.
He's got a handlebar stash with some like evil, con evil outfit, but with abs showing
because that's the most important part.
Very broad shoulder.
Right, like bigger Lego, not typical tough guy and Mr. Wonderful feel like they have a double
Lego going on.
Dane Cook and then last but not least is Jane Alabama who's got a pinstripe suit on,
ginger hair, pencil in it, spectacles, played by Adele, Xer Cho, I'm so sorry.
It's a French last name.
She was in blue is the warm color played by Adele, not that Adele, not that Adele,
but that's really cute.
Yeah.
Obviously I'm an Amy polar fan.
It's weird to look at a Lego and go, oh yeah, that's Amy polar.
And this is around the time that she has done inside out.
Oh nice.
Yeah, those are fun.
We're going to go a little bit into Ninjago and just kind of explain.
Were you into Ninjago?
No, I was not.
Ninjago was a little past our prime, I feel like.
Definitely was.
So on paper, the Ninjago movie seems like it's a focus group jackpot.
The Ninjago product line actually came out of a series called Lego Castle and this actually
started back in 1978.
The first set in this line was a medieval yellow castle populated by armed knights.
Over time, various types of knights and structures were then added.
And in 1993, a more magical element was included when they started introducing dragons,
wizards and other mythical creatures.
I vaguely remember this.
And it wasn't until 1998 that ninjas were introduced as part of the series.
In 2011, Lego made an official product line known as Ninjago with a TV show to accompany
it.
And Ninjago, the masters of Spinjitsu, ran from 2011 to 2022 in a sequel series, Ninjago,
dragons rising, continues the story.
It premiered in 2023 and is actually still going to this day.
And as for the sets, there are over 600 of them.
Ninjago, still going?
It's still going.
Like I mentioned before, Ninjago with the movie feels like a focus group jackpot.
I agree and disagree.
The beauty of the Lego movie, one, I don't know if I've seen two.
And then the Batman movie is they are reminiscent to me of 90s for the whole family movies.
There is adult jokes.
It's also perfectly set for itty bitties.
The thing that I don't see in the Ninjago movie is that like those ones don't feel
the same.
They definitely feel I'm not to keep gendering things, but they feel a little bit like a boy
party to me.
It does.
I almost understand why if you would have these big tent poles that everyone's like, I can
take the whole family to this and then this one comes out, you're like, oh, well.
Yeah.
But yeah, at the time, it seemed like the perfect option.
And this big thing, Lego didn't have to share the rights with another IP.
Oh, that's true.
Mm-hmm.
I think that's a big motivator there.
It's like, well, we tried it with other stuff we did with Batman, we did it with Warner
Brothers and their whole library of stuff that they have.
Now it's our turn to be like, well, people are going there for the Lego part.
Like why don't we just go all in and actually do the Lego?
That's why I'm like, why wouldn't you have done the Cannonball run?
Like to me, that's in the same voice as the other ones, just completely original.
Yeah.
And it seemed like they were going to go down that road.
I don't understand the hard left into like our own IP.
I think they were just too scared at that point.
They were just like, we're losing money, we're hemorrhaging money, like we're just, we can't
keep going like this.
And we--
So Ninjago's.
And we just might as well cut our losses.
I mean, that decision was after Ninjago had been released.
You're right.
So in hindsight, they wouldn't have known.
So although the film was technically a success in the box office, it raked in over $120
million with a $70 million budget, it was nothing like the Lego movie.
Or Lego Batman.
Now we know with the Lego movie, I didn't say how much the Lego Batman movie brought in,
but that was around $300 million.
So well over double.
Yeah, I mean, Batman's always a surefire, but--
Yeah, Batman, I consider, is like Warner Bros.
Rintin-Tin now.
Like, not making any money, put out a Batman movie.
Yeah.
Interest in a new big budget, Lego movie, didn't seem to interest audiences anymore.
Even critically, it didn't seem to connect.
Even though they found it very funny.
The spectacle just wasn't there after seeing the Lego movie.
And it seems like the film tried to tell a familiar story to the Lego movie, a father and
son relationship that seemed to be explored within the universe.
From those who follow Ninjago, it seems like they were disappointed in the film.
Much of the character's development seemed to be dismissed, and the character seemed to
be flattened to just a single trope.
Which makes sense when you learn that they wanted this movie to fit in more with the
Lego universe and not the Ninjago universe.
So as if like--
Oh, that makes sense.
It's the kids' imagination, not the lore from the show.
Yeah, but have you met children like they understand lore so deeply?
They do.
Like more so than we did.
Oh, yeah.
No, I'm like, some seven-year-old is like actually, then Ninjago lore says, and I'm like,
cool, I believe you, old hardly.
I'm watching the new live-action Avatar, and I'm sure Amber is sick of me because I'm just
like, actually.
Yeah.
Every scene.
Every time I see it pop up, I'm like, oh, man, I don't want to watch it alone.
I actually always enjoy your, like, let's push up glasses and have deep-commentarian things.
Like, I just want like the DVD-Dan commentary for it.
Yeah.
Also, this production back to Ninjago seemed to be chaotic.
Now, there's no like reported proof of this, but there is like some signs that it was chaotic
considering that there were nine story-buy and screenplay credits?
Those nine writers, they're not in a room trying to figure this out.
It's usually like, hey, this isn't working.
You make a new story.
You write a new script.
Hey, that's not working.
You try and figure it out.
Right.
What they need is like two adults and three kids in a writer's room.
Yeah.
Well, is it Holly Berry when she accepted her razzie for the Catwoman movie?
She's like, I would like to think all 20 writers.
Oh!
Oh my God!
Yeah.
I wonder how that, from again, the producerial element of that is like, how does that work with
the WGA guidelines and like, how does everybody get paid and what?
20?
It was a lot, yeah.
Dear God.
It went through a lot of iterations and you can hear about it in our Catwoman episode.
Also, another sign that it may have been chaotic is that they actually push the release date
a full year later, originally, was going to be September 23rd, 2016, new release date
when it actually came out, September 22nd, 2017.
Wow, that is a little calendar year.
But also, this is my theory.
And I think you brought it up as well.
Tell me please.
For those who watch the Lego movie and Lego Batman, they're familiar with the toys, they're
familiar with the IP.
And those who just don't know what Ninjaco is, they're just not going to go out and see
it.
Right.
And I'm thinking back to like me, I didn't see Ninjaco in theaters.
I eventually watched it streaming because I was like, oh, I mean, I never watched this Lego
movie and I liked the other Lego movies.
So I do agree.
It was funny.
There is the Laloid joke.
Laloid?
That's right.
It's me, your son, and it's Lloyd Dad.
No.
Ellen Oh, why do I name you?
You ruined my life.
How could I ruin your life?
I wasn't even there.
It's interesting to me when you were saying they wanted it to fit into like the Lego universe
more and less of the Ninjaco universe.
If you want people to care about anything, give them more, give them character.
Respect the fandom.
Yeah, respect the fandom, respect the material.
Yeah.
So in my head, I'm like, okay, if you really wanted to build your own brand, Ninjaco already
did half the work for you, like commit to the bit.
Yeah.
I mean, I'm mildly curious about it.
I'm going out.
Go check it out if you want to.
Or just watch the Lego movie again.
Or just watch the Lego movie because--
Uniquity.
Or the best Batman movie ever made.
I actually do agree with that, Santa.
There are many producers of Batman who would agree with you.
Oh, I'm sure.
So my theory seems to stand.
When WB put out a Uniquity TV series.
Hi!
Woohoo!
Uniquity!
Yeah, it was actually pretty popular.
Kim out in 2017 had over a hundred episodes.
You know why?
Uniquity.
It's gonna get universal to children.
Yes.
But also, Lego and WB figured that it was time to get the gang back together and do Lego
movie too.
The second part.
Yeah.
They wanted to bring back the original director as Lord and Miller.
But since the first movie, they got a little bit busy.
We did.
Doing projects like 22 Jump Street and Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse.
We did a Han Solo movie that we don't need to talk about right now and might be a few
drapes out in the podcast.
Oh!
I thought we were talking about the mother of Dragon's Han Solo movie, but no.
We'll do it without later.
Since they were stretched so thin, they only agreed to produce and help write the script.
Only in my spare time.
To direct was Chris McKay, but he was already preoccupied.
Direct and Lego Batman.
Next in line was Rob Schrob.
He was a creator of Scud the Disposable Assassin.
He is Dan Harmon's writing partner.
He directed many episodes of Community and he directed the Lego movie 4D.
A new adventure.
So he was perfect for directing the new Lego movie.
I didn't know there was a Lego movie 4D.
It's like when you go to Universal and they have the Kung Fu Dragon 4D.
Oh!
One board on board on board.
Okay.
It's like that.
They went through several rewrites with Lord and Miller and multiple writers.
Eventually Schrob left the project in 2017 for Creative Differences.
Insert generic answer here.
Yeah.
Next to direct was Mike Mitchell.
He directed one of your favorite movie Sky High.
He did Trek Forever After.
Elvin and the Chipmunks.
Chipwrecked.
Intro.
Oh, excuse me.
Out of that list, I don't know what Sky High is.
You don't know what?
What?
Okay.
Hang on.
Before you get all jetgy pants.
Around the time of Sky High, there was a similar movie called like High School in the
air or something.
It's not right, but it's a very similar title because that doesn't have Courtney Cox in
it.
Courtney Cox is in the similar movie.
Oh, I thought you...
I know.
Really?
I'm not a Sky High girl.
Oh, that list though.
Give me Elvin and the Chipmunks.
Chipwrecked.
Every time.
Okay.
Anyway.
Dan Lynn.
Chipwrecked?
No.
He's the one who started the whole Lego movie.
All right.
Back at it.
Rick Moral.
Yep.
I'm not a musical number.
You know, since Disney was finding success in there animated musicals such as Tangled, Frozen,
and Moana.
Listen.
Oh, no.
Are we in a musical?
Yep.
Get ready.
Hello, friends.
My name is Queen.
What has R1A?
Don't worry.
I'm totally not one of those evil queens.
You've read about it.
Fairy tales were seen in the movies.
And there's no reason at all to be suspicious of.
No.
This film, like Ninjago, also has a story.
I had to push the release date again a year later from May 26, 2017 to May 18, 2018.
Okay.
But May is a good month for movies.
It's the beginning of summer blockbusters.
Yeah.
But then they had to push it again to February 8, 2019.
Dig a hole.
Regardless of the delays, this might have been a blessing in disguise because around this
time, Lord and Miller were actually just raking in all of the awards for Spider-Verse.
Now, there's another Lord and Miller animated movies with characters that we love.
There's no way this is gonna fail, right?
I mean, to be fair, yeah, there's no way.
Well, the movie was released and it made just under $200 million.
What was the original budget?
Budget was increased to $99 million.
Oh.
So, it was considered a bomb.
So what was it?
Did the animation that Wowd audiences five years before seem unimpressive or expected
now?
It might be that the reviews stated that this is just more the same.
And in many ways, the first film was just flat out better than the sequel.
So just don't bother with this one.
I think my theory brain.
It might have been fatigue of animated movies based on established IP.
Between the first and second LEGO movie, we had a Playmobile movie, the Penets movie,
Birds, Captain Underpants, Smurfs, My Little Pony, and the Umoji movie.
I was gonna say it's the Umoji movie.
The Umoji movie kind of ruined a lot of things.
Okay, now that we're talking about it, I don't think I've seen like a movie too.
I don't know what the plot is.
I don't remember it either.
I watched LEGO movie two in theaters.
I don't remember what happened.
Ratro, that's a big problem.
If we don't remember, I'm like, was it a continuation of the first one?
Kind of, yeah.
I know they go into like the sister's room.
And then it's her toys that they have to play with now.
Oh, damn it.
Now I want to watch it because I'm like, what was it?
So yeah, movies just start to feel unoriginal in late-stage capitalism.
Shocker.
And this seemed like the beginning of the end.
To back it up just a little bit because this came out in 2019.
December 2018, it was announced that they were going to make a LEGO Batman sequel and
that Christmas K would be back to direct.
To write the script was Michael Waldron.
He was the creator of Loki and he helped write all the episodes, I believe.
He did write one episode for Rick and Morty and he wrote Dr. Strange in the Multiverse
of Madness.
A, that was my clue.
Yep.
To co-write with him was Dan Harmon.
You said they were partners or something?
Yep, they were partners.
That's crazy to me that like Dan Harmon of community and like Loki.
I mean, Dan Harmon did help out with some Marvel stuff.
I know that when it came to the first Dr. Strange movie, I believe he came in to help like rewrite.
Fascinating.
You know at the part where they have to like rewind time and Dr. Strange puts whatever that
got is like into a time loop?
Yes.
That's Dan Harmon.
Got it.
That's his rewrites.
In an interview with Collider, McKay described vaguely what the film was going to be about.
But Dan and Waldron had the first draft of the script and it was really great.
It was truly epic.
Both from an action standpoint and from a story standpoint.
The structure was Godfather Part II.
A story about Batman's relationship to the Justice League and Superman.
Now as well as the formative moments of the Justice League and Batman's relationship to Superman.
Then the film was about friendship and change and it was about how hard it is to change,
to commit to change, to stay on the new road you've carved out for yourself.
Especially when maybe you weren't such a good guy to your friends.
Your old friends might not be able to see the new you.
They might not still live in the past.
But as the movie and Robin finds out, the past might be more complicated than it seems.
We had a lot of great voice actors from the Lego movie and Lego Batman.
The villain was going to be Lex Luther and O'Mac.
I don't know if you know who O'Mac is.
So O'Mac, the observational metahuman activity construct.
So basically it was like the satellite that Batman had constructed to help surveillance
anyone with superhumans.
But also it had a database in there of every single person's weakness.
So if anyone of them steps out a line, Batman can take him down.
And imagine what happens if that malfunctions.
No thanks.
Yeah, I think was just a sleep doom.
It's a straight to video animated feature that DC did where basically that was the premise
of the movie was like O'Mac is going haywire in what's going on.
It's really neat.
I like that concept.
More from the interview.
There's more of course.
Lots of Aquaman, one woman, Lois Lane.
There's also going to be a big crossover at one point in the movie that only one can
do in a Lego movie.
I'm sure they're going to bring in like some other WB like property to like go into there
with them.
A page of the script was leaked by Muckle Waldron that reads Lego superfriends based on the
Lego Batman movie based on the Lego movie based on the Lego line of toys, which were probably
based on Lincoln Lugs.
Amazing.
Also based on DC comic book characters such as Batman, Superman, Aquaman, The Wonder Twins,
also loosely based on Boogie Knights based on the cartoon superfriends based on an original
idea by Dan Harmon and Michael Waldron.
Pretty great.
There's a lot of based on.
Just like with Billion Brick Race, the underperformance of Ninjago and Lego movie two,
Spook WB to pull the plug and cut their losses.
Now is this the end of the Lego movies?
No.
With WB most likely?
Yes.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, but we also had am I stealing from your notes now?
The Forreal piece by piece, right?
Right by brick?
Let me explain.
Right.
I like that you're thinking about this and you're just like, yeah, it's not fun when someone
steals your notes, is it?
I love it.
For the Lego group, which is the production company that's in charge of the Lego movie franchise,
they signed a five year deal with the universe studios.
Oh, right.
It did pivot.
Mm-hmm.
The same deal they signed with WB.
If you remember, in 2024, they released a Forreal Williams biopic piece by piece.
In the latest news, Universal and Lego Group announced that they were working on five
new Lego films under the deal.
I know right now they're doing a TV series, which is Dress Park.
Now although the Super Friends movie does not have a chance because the IP is all owned by
Horned Brothers, billion brick race does still have a chance.
That is not tied to any IP.
And you could use the worlds that Universal owns.
Essentially, you could just rework the script.
Like honestly, there's so much, oh my god, just take the Universal Tram, let that be your
mode of transportation and then just jump through each like world.
I have two guesses as to which Lego movies might actually happen.
And I want to give you a chance to also guess what you think Universal is going to do with
the Lego property.
What IP would they use in Lego Fiat?
I mean, what do I want them to do or what do I think they'll do?
Let's do a want and a prediction.
Can't we know my want is going to be the Monsters?
Mm-hmm.
That was actually one of my predictions is that they're going to be Universal Monsters.
Oh, please, every Monster movie ever, that's the dark universe.
Legitimately also that's cute for children's toys.
There are not Monster Legos yet or maybe there are and I just don't know them, but that's
how you get me to spend money on Legos.
That's what I would want them to do, 100%.
If they're going to go off big IP, probably fast in the Furious, oh, that's a fun way to
take that Cannonball Run movie and keep living here on lore because here your family
Oh, so good.
Honestly, now that I've said it out loud too, I just think like I want the tram to be the movie.
Like you go take the studio to a, but then you actually wind up instead of going on like
a normal studio to or something magical happens and then you go to the world of movies.
Yeah, my want you already said, which is the Universal Monsters, my prediction, it'll
make you grown.
Oh, God.
I know it's going to happen.
Lego minions.
I have no words.
Honestly, you're correct.
You're so right at hers.
I don't hate the minions.
I just don't love them like the rest of the world.
I did read a thing and I don't know how true it is, but the creator of minions said all the
minions are men.
They are.
Like women would never do anything that silly.
My heart grew a little bit.
There was a minute.
They also revealed that they were frozen in a cave during the time of Hitler and Mussolini.
How convenient.
Maybe I got a rewatch.
Yes.
Oh my God, you're so right.
And I like, oh, I'm not even mad.
I'm mad at myself for not like guessing it.
And like now is the perfect time to watch the minions because minions and monsters just came
out.
But it's not like actual monsters, which makes me sad.
It's like some orange goo.
I believe they put in some uniform monsters.
But they didn't.
Huge mistake.
That is where the Lego group, the Lego movies, that is where it's out right now.
Dan and I are available to write the sequel.
We are available to write the sequel.
I was trying to figure out how to end this episode.
And I think I found where it is.
Menions?
Yes, menions.
What I want to end the episode with is an unsung hero that I believe made the original
Lego movie what it was and why we connect with it.
Dextone!
I had to.
We can do.
Her name is Lindsay Doran.
She is a script doctor.
For those who don't know, they're a consultant.
Basically, whenever a studio, a production just can't make the story work, they're going
to go out and do something.
They come in and perform writer's surgery.
There was a famous actress who used to be a script doctor, especially throughout like
the 90s, I believe.
Carrie Fisher was a script doctor.
If anyone's having trouble with the story, they're the ones who try to make it work.
For Lindsay Doran, the philosophy that she teaches is that the best films are those who
define a relationship at the end of the movie.
And she helped fill Lord and Chris Miller structure the film and added what is probably
the most important part of the film.
Prior to her involvement, the film was going to take place solely in the Lego universe.
And her crucial suggestion was to take the film out of the world and focus on the father
and son relationship.
Take the differences of play and structure and find a way to mend that relationship.
She found the soul in a soulless toy.
And when we see the small details of those toys like scratches and fingerprints and worn
edges, we register that that toy has been played with, that those toys are a vessel of
someone's imagination, of someone's magic portal.
I was going to make a joke and then you just ended there.
Yeah, I mean, yep, nope, I have no idea.
Now for our favorite part of the episode, our recommendations where we tell you what we
watched and tell you what you need to watch.
Mm-hmm.
I am going to get ahead of the curve this week.
Ooh.
And I'm going to recommend something that on a technicality, I haven't seen in this format,
but I have seen it.
And so opening on July 24 is Havies Town, the musical.
Ooh.
They're like professional recording of it.
Interesting.
Yeah.
Havies Town is the story of Orpheus and Euridice as a musical.
This was the first Broadway musical I ever got to see in New York City.
I have been a big fan of The Orpheus and Euridice myth for a long time.
I was in the play Euridice by Sarah Rural, one isn't college, or I guess a scene from it.
I just think it's a really good myth and very timeless and then the musical is perfect
and fun fact about the musical.
If you've ever seen a teeny tiny little show called This Is Us with Chris Sullivan who was
Toby on This Is Us, he actually was in the original original recording.
Ooh.
As Hermes.
That did not follow through to the Broadway release.
He's an amazing singer and I was like watching one of the very, really recordings and I was
like, oh my god, Toby!
But Havies Town is great.
It is really emotional and very timely and I think the story is something that we all
sort of need to listen to.
I'm very excited to go to the movie theater to see the musical theater for Havies Town.
I'm glad.
Get to see the stage on the big screen.
Yep, how it was intended.
Much like visual podcasts.
My recommendation.
I guess it's going to fit the theme.
It actually will.
Damn it!
Transformers 1.
With Shia Lebuff?
No.
This is Sans Shia.
Is this a stop motion, Transformers?
I don't know about.
It is not a stop motion.
I almost went down that road, but I do have my reasons.
Transformers 1.
This came out in 2024.
Transformers 1.
It is a completely animated movie, CG animated movie.
Oh!
With Scar Jo.
And this is kind of like before the events of the Transformers taking place on Earth.
This takes place on their original planet that they're from, Cybertron.
And I know.
Like saying the names out loud is very silly.
Oh, Brian Tyree Henry is Megatron?
It's really well cast.
Keegan Michael Key is Bumblebee.
I know they actually say Bumblebee in the movie.
He's just known as B.
And he is amazing.
Oh, directed by Josh Cooley.
And he also did Toys 4.
Yes, he did.
And Toys 4 of Terror.
Full circle.
It was actually really good.
I was surprised because I feel like we have this fatigue of like the Michael Bay Transformer
movies with Shia and whatever.
Shia and above.
And having the human cast.
This is only the cast of Transformers.
And it goes to the origin story of Megatron and Optimus Prime back when they were
friends, they were much younger and kind of like how they get their powers.
You actually get to see them transform for the first time, which is actually really funny.
That's cute.
Bumblebee, he transforms into like the yellow car.
But he's like, I don't have any wheels.
So you see his arms sticking out and he's like trying to like, waddle like down.
I never ever seen the trailer for this and being like, it actually looks really cute.
It is better than it should be.
So if you're looking for a movie that's based on a toy, definitely check out Transformers
1.
Oh, there's your thrill on it.
And you can find us on our social media pages on TikTok and Instagram.
We are at development purgatory on loose.
We are at the exception of.
Blue Sky, which we are dev purgatory.
There we are going to be putting up a lot of concept art for the Lego movie or the
Unmade Lego movies, which you definitely remember.
The Unmade Lego movie?
The Unmade Lego movies.
We're going to put up concept art on there.
Oh, no.
You get to check it out there.
It's going to be a lot of fun.
And you can help support this podcast by subscribing to our Patreon.
There you can get ad free episodes of every episode that we've done.
Even the ones that included devod.
Devid.
If you can't support us there, that's completely understandable.
There are other ways that you can support us.
You can rate and review the podcast on your podcast of choice.
And you can just tell your friends, tell your family, tell your enemies, tell anyone who
will listen to you, hey, listen to this podcast.
And they're like, what's a podcast?
And they're like, well, it's like, if you go to YouTube.
Yeah.
And we'll sign off by saying, can do will do.
Can do will do.
- Bye.
(laughs)