While we all eagerly await The LEGO Batman Movie, Warner Bros. is moving ahead with The LEGO Movie Sequel, but there’s now been a director shake up. In February 2015, we reported that Rob Schrab, who had previously directed episodes of Community and The Mindy Project, would be making his feature debut on The LEGO Movie 2. However, it now turns out that he’s off the project, and according to THR, the studio has brought in Trolls helmer Mike Mitchell. It’s a bit of a discouraging move when you look at their respective filmographies. Yes, Schrab hadn’t done a feature film before, but he had lots of experience with TV comedies. Then you look at Mitchell, whose best film is Sky High. However, his resume also includes Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked, and Surviving Christmas. So there is some cause for concern. That’s not to say that The LEGO Movie 2 will be a bust. Raphael Bob-Waksberg, who is behind the acclaimed animated series BoJack Horseman, wrote the latest draft of the script and Phil Lord and Chris Miller, who wrote and directed the first LEGO Movie, are still on board as producers (although I assume most of their attention right now is on the Han Solo spinoff).
Hopefully, Mitchell carries the winning attitude of the first movie into the sequel. I’m also curious what the “creative differences” were with Schrab that led to him leaving the project and Warner Bros. bringing in Mitchell. While The LEGO Movie 2 is still a couple years away, my expectations for it remain as high as ever, so I wish Mitchell the best in trying to match the magic of the first movie. The LEGO Movie 2 is currently set to open on February 8, 2019. If you need your LEGO fix before then, The LEGO Batman Movie opens next Friday.L.A. NowLiving near freeways makes people sick. L.A. keeps building next to them anyway 'Lego Movie' actor Chris Pratt on improvising in the booth When it comes to playing with Legos, there are two kinds of builders: those who follow the instructions to a T, and those who take a free-form approach. In making "The Lego Movie," filmmakers Phil Lord and Chris Miller and star Chris Pratt took the latter approach.In this clip from a recent presentation of the film for the Envelope Screening Series, Pratt talks about ad-libbing and improvising from the usually narrow confines of the vocal booth.
"I think it was really a little different the way that [Lord and Miller] did it," Pratt says. Typically with animated movies, "the screenplay — word for word — was the holy grail. You come in and you're locked off in a box and you just say each line over and over and over, and you give them several options, but exactly as written .… It's like following the instructions perfectly. You know exactly what piece you need, you get it and you lay it down."Just like with the plastic building blocks, going by the book makes it easy to put everything together in the end — even when the actors record their lines in isolation and on separate days — but it doesn't leave much room for spontaneity.For "The Lego Movie," Pratt says, the actors often recorded scenes together, which allowed them to try new things and deviate from the script."We're sitting around, we're all saying our parts, and the scene is coming to life," Pratt recalls. He adds, "Comedy is so organically born in the moment by stuff that doesn't exist on the page.
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