Speaking of Things Coming to An End

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The deal between LEGO and Warner Bros. expired this Fall which leaves the future of LEGO movies uncertain.

Warner Bros. oversaw the multifaceted success that was The Lego Movie and the lesser, but decent, LEGO Batman.

The Lego Movie pulled in $468 million dollars from a $60 million dollar budget while Lego Batman made a tidy $311 Million from an $80 million dollar budget.

However, since then the outlook has apparently not been rosy enough for the WB.

A soft reboot/continuation of LEGO Ninjago pulled in $123 Million despite having a lot of success on the small screen. The main factor was it strayed away from a functioning formula and more toward the zaniness that made The Lego Movie such a fun and fresh experience.

Even The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part couldn’t even touch its predecessor coming in at $191 million dollars which suggests WB might be making a prudent financial decision.

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Audience Fatigue or was it just a Fluke?

That is yet to be determined but, due to diminishing returns from the follow-ups, WB looking pretty risk-averse here makes a bit of sense…on one hand anyway.

But on the other, these movies showed the mediums potential for expanding the LEGO universe.

By using one of the most popular and free-form toys to comment on society and culture they tapped into the vein that connects us, not only to our children but to our own childhoods.

Though mostly thanks to wunderkinds Phil Lord and Chris Miller and their charmingly meta approach there seems to be material left to mine. It’s just about bringing the right people together.

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Why Universal May Be A Good Fit

They are darn good at building and supporting franchises.

They know what flavors audiences enjoy and are adept at serving up the same recipe in a slightly different dish, over and over again.

The Jurassic World series stumbles along apparently because…dinosaurs?

While The Fast and the Furious franchise is on its 13th iteration and it’s about…cars and family?

Yet, despite the success of these properties Universal is still relatively light on name-brand franchises and assuming these series are finite, LEGO could be an opportunity to provide that.

Not only that but Universal will be launching a streaming service that LEGO could also both feed and support.

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See how these things all connect? If Universal is lucky they might be able to.

It is rumored the LEGO producer Dan Lin would follow the property should it make the jump but the future remains amorphous.

Current projects in the pipeline as of now are Lego Batman 2 (currently set for 2022) and The Billion Brick Race (in development).

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I think you can see where this might be going.