The new “Lego Movie 4-D: A New Adventure” film coming to Legoland theme parks around the world in early 2016 will seek to replicate the off-beat humor and firecracker wit that made the original animated movie a hit with both critics and moviegoers.The 12-minute Legoland movie brings back everyman construction worker Emmet Brickowski for a new story that combines 3-D animation with wind, water, fog and lighting effects. IN THE LOOP: Sign up for our weekly theme parks newsletter“Lego Movie 4-D” finds Emmet invited to a Legoland-like theme park where all the rides are based on adventures from the original movie. But the fun soon ends when Emmet and his friends are thrust into the middle of an "evil secret plot" concocted by new villain Risky Business, the brother of Lord Business. Emmet's nemesis will be voiced by comedian Patton Oswalt, best known for voicing Remy in “Ratatouille” and playing Spencer Olchin on “The King of Queens.” The theme park movie reunites some of the celebrity voice talents from the original theatrical release, including Elizabeth Banks (Wyldstyle), Alison Brie (Unikitty), Nick Offerman (MetalBeard) and Charlie Day (Benny).
“Lego Movie 4-D” will be directed and co-written by Rob Schrab, who is also slated to direct the “Lego Movie” sequel set for a 2018 release. Schrab’s resume includes directing stints on “The Mindy Project” and “Community” as well as writing work on “The Sarah Silverman Project” and “The Monster House.”Notably missing from the Legoland 4-D movie credits are the screenwriting wizards Phil Lord and Christopher Miller as well as the celebrity voice talents of Will Ferrell, Will Arnet, Liam Neeson and Morgan Freeman. It has yet to be determined if Chris Pratt -- the voice of protagonist Emmet Brickowski -- can squeeze the voice-over work into his busy schedule, Legoland officials said. The new Legoland movie will be created by North Hollywood-based Pure Imagination Studios, which worked on the Angry Birds 4-D experience at the United Kingdom’s Thorpe Park and the Justice League: Battle for Metropolis 4-D interactive dark rides at Six Flags parks. “Lego Movie 4-D” debuts at Legoland Florida on Jan. 29 and at Legoland California on Feb. 6 (a.k.a. Super Bowl weekend).
Legolands in England, Germany, Denmark and Malaysia will get the 4-D film in March when the parks open for the season. The 11 Legoland Discovery Centers in North America, Asia and Europe will also screen the movie.In California, the new Lego movie replaces “Legends of Chima 4-D” and “Clutch Powers 4-D.”32 best new theme park additions of 20158 unanswered questions about Disneyland's Star Wars LandDisneyland 2055: What the future may hold for the original Disney parkDisneyland 1955: 'Walt's Folly' got off to a nightmare start21 creepiest abandoned amusement parks> Sign-up for our weekly In the Loop theme park newsletter > Follow the Los Angeles Times Funland theme park blog on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Instagram.The spin-off from 2014's The Lego Movie will be released in February 2017 The new trailer for The Lego Batman Movie has been released. The film is a spin-off from 2014’s The Lego Movie, and features the voice of Will Arnett as the eponymous protagonist, as well as Zach Galifianakis (The Joker), Michael Cera (Robin), Rosario Dawson (Batgirl), and Ralph Fiennes (Alfred Pennyworth).
Mariah Carey will also lend her voice to proceedings, playing the role of the Mayor of Gotham City. The film is scheduled for a release date of February 10, 2017, and a new trailer – the third teaser to be released so far – for the film was unveiled over the weekend at Comic-Con in San Diego. Watch the trailer below. The Lego Batman Movie is the first of three Lego-based films in the works. It will be followed by Ninjago, a Ninja-themed spin-off which will arrive on September 22, 2017, and then The Lego Movie Sequel, which is due on May 8, 2018. Released in 2014, The Lego Movie was a surprise smash for Warner Bros, raking in more than $468million (£301million) at the box office worldwide.Is any art form quite as fraught as the toy-inspired film? Its existence is fundamentally cynical: I can sell toys, therefore I am. And yet, to achieve its true goal, the toy movie must evoke the sincerity, humor, and psychological engagement that children experience when they’re cross-legged on the floor with their dolls or construction sets.
“Bratz: The Movie” came out in 2007, when Bratz dolls—like Barbies but more diverse, and styled as if by RuPaul—were at their most popular. But the film tanked, earning a nine-per-cent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Girls loved Bratz as toys, because they could imagine that the dolls had strong, sassy personalities; as movie characters, the Bratz turned out to be shallow and mean. In a review, Tony Wong of the Toronto Star wrote, “Bratz is a disappointment because the characters come off less as the girly superheroes they should be, and more as, well, brats.” Since then, the Bratz brand has faded. The company that makes the dolls, MGA Entertainment, can hardly blame the movie for everything—among other problems, MGA has been caught up in years of legal battles with Mattel—but it certainly didn’t help. It was not inevitable, then, that “The Lego Movie” would be good for Denmark’s Lego Group. Sean McGowan, a toy-industry analyst at the firm Needham & Company, remembers talking to Lego executives in 2013, when the movie hadn’t yet come out and few employees had seen it.
The company had been growing quickly for several years—much more quickly than the toy sector as a whole—but its momentum had recently slowed. Executives were hopeful about the movie’s prospects, but also anxious. Would it poke fun at the toy? Would it be any good? “They were nervously excited and a little concerned that their hopes wouldn’t be met,” McGowan says. As he remembers it, no one expected the film to alter the brand’s fortunes in any meaningful way. “Nobody at Lego, at this time last year, was thinking, ‘We’re going to turn around what has been a slower year and really reaccelerate.’ ” On Thursday, though, it became clear that the company has done exactly that. Lego is now the world’s biggest toymaker, as judged by sales in the first half of 2014, when it reported revenues of more than two billion dollars. Mattel, the perennial No. 1 toy company, fell to the No. 2 spot with only two billion dollars. Lego’s chief financial officer, John Goodwin, said in a press release that sales of toys related to the Lego film “provided a significant boost to our sales.”
“The Lego Movie,” which was made by Warner Bros., is utterly odd. It’s about an everyman construction worker who falls in with some well-known cartoon characters and superheroes, including Batman, in their mission to defeat a tyrant named Lord Business, who wants to control the world by gluing everything together. In other words, the film has a plot that you and your eight-year-old might have conceived together. This is, perhaps, the reason for its success: it is infused with the same quirky sensibility that a child might bring to playing with Legos. As Anthony Lane noted in March, in his review of the film, there’s a rich irony in the movie’s use of anti-capitalist themes to achieve the aim of selling your kids more toys: “Needless to say, in the wake of a very funny film, the last laugh will be theirs,” Lane wrote of the toy’s makers. (Lane also wrote about Legos for the magazine in 1998.) Indeed, Lego’s press release announcing its earnings results helpfully includes a list of movie-inspired toys.
For $69.99, for example, you can buy Lord Business’s “Evil Lair,” which comes complete with a think tank, a TV studio, and an “infinity drop window.” Lego fans seem impressed. One reviewer on the Lego Web site, presumably an adult, listed seven “Pros.” No. 3: “The desk is well designed with spinning chairs.” No. 6: “It definitely has that ‘evil-lair’ feel.” (The one con: too many stickers.) The movie’s DVD release, earlier this year, could give Lego sales a further boost. This isn’t to say that Lego’s success is entirely attributable to the film; its sales have been growing rapidly for several years, with the exception of a brief slowdown last year. One reason for this, McGowan told me, is that the company has aggressively expanded into products outside of construction sets. For example, Lego now markets video games (one of which, not incidentally, stars a Lego Batman). In November, 2013, Ted Trautman wrote about how the educational value of Legos (the construction component teaches problem-solving skills; the storytelling encouraged by Lego figures inspires creativity) also might be helping the company’s sales in regions, such as Asia, where parents value educational toys.