We will be closed Monday, February 27 through Friday, March 3 as we build new adventures! The shop will remain open Monday-Thursday 10am-5pm, and Friday 12pm-5pm. The attraction and shop will return to normal hours on Saturday, March 4. Family fun with 2 rides, 10 LEGO build & play zones, a 4D cinema & much more! How to get here We're open every day Save up to 25% on tickets 12 family attractions & activities4D cinema, Kingdom Quest laser ride, Merlin’s Apprentice, LEGO Fire Academy... and more! Discover the city in miniatureSee all of New York's top attractions made from LEGO in our MINILAND® Birthday parties & group dealsLEGO themed birthday parties here in Westchester! Get LEGO® building tipsLearn building tips from our Master Model Builder Workshops. School tripsOne-of-a-kind school trips to support the National Curriculum. Sign up for Offers Enter your email and we'll send you the latest news and offers!If there was moment at the 2015 Oscars that turned more heads than host Neil Patrick Harris in his underwear, it was how Lego turned an Academy snub into the marketing moment of the year.
Though The Lego Movie, a fan favorite and $468 million blockbuster, earned not a single nomination in the animated feature category, the 83-year-old Danish toy company proved it didn't need one. During a two-and-a-half-minute rendition of "Everything Is Awesome," dancers fanned out through the audience to hand yellow Oscar statuettes (made from Lego bricks, naturally) to the likes of Meryl Streep, Clint Eastwood and, most memorably, Oprah Winfrey, whose look of surprise and delight reached 35 million viewers. In fact, according to data crunched by Amobee Brand Intelligence, Lego dominated the night with close to 47,000 social mentions and 44 percent of the real-time discussion. That little Oscar trick handed the toy brand some $7.5 million of free advertising. Not a bad night for a loser. "Nobody really knew what would happen," says Lego senior director, brand relations Michael McNally. "It was organic, and a testament to how people feel about the brand." Marketing vp Michael Moynihan modestly minimizes his own role in the activation.
"I'm not really doing any marketing as such," he says. "It's more making sure that my people have the resources they need." And his people clearly do. Rather than dictating the brand's marketing from the corner office, Moynihan oversees a kind of creative collective charged with devising memorable work to surround the brand—say, a 43-foot-long, 23-ton Star Wars X-wing fighter in Times Square in 2013. Because Lego mainly targets existing fans, it really just needs to do cool stuff, and let the rest take care of itself. "It's not marketing in the traditional sense," Moynihan explains. "In order to have something to market, we need to create experiences." Consider The Lego Movie. While Lego could have bought a 90-minute commercial (as Moynihan puts it: "Here's the line of toys, now make a movie around it"), it instead focused on story and character development, reasoning that when good content leads, customers will follow. The same holds true for Ninjago, Lego's hit series on Cartoon Network, and its impressive array of online videos (both on its site and its YouTube channel), which don't just showcase product but also give fans a behind-the-scenes look at how the toys are made and tips on how to play with them.
"We do research among kids on what kind of content they're looking for and gear our content around those needs," Moynihan says. While that approach has won Lego much attention in recent years, it's really just a continuation of the comeback strategy that CEO Jorgen Vig Knudstorp deployed in 2004 to save a bloated, directionless Lego from bankruptcy by licensing top franchises like Star Wars and soliciting customer feedback about product, both from kids and AFOLs (Adult Fans of Lego). Thanks to an internal rallying cry Moynihan describes as "serving, not selling," the brand that nearly disappeared a decade ago posted 18 percent revenue growth in the first half of this year—fueled in part by the movie and that memorable night at the Oscars. Speaking of which, those Lego statu-ettes (by artist Nathan Sawaya) came out of Lego's in-house model shop, which also built props for the show's Lego musical number. And while social media exploded with images of movie stars cherishing their ersatz Oscars, McNally points out that the stars themselves were actually secondary.
"It doesn't matter that there are celebrities," he says. "It matters that the brand resonates with them. They get a statuette made of bricks and they're losing their minds? It was a pure genius moment." This story first appeared in the Oct. 19 issue of Adweek magazine. Click here to subscribe.‘The LEGO Movie 2’ is Apparently a “Big Musical” Filled with “Space Action”Posted on Monday, February 27th, 2017 by Jacob HallThe deranged beauty of The LEGO Movie was that it could be anything it wanted to be, existing in a universe where the only borders were the limits of a child’s imagination. Rather than feel like a commercial, it felt like a tribute to the limitless possibilities of playtime – it was unafraid to jumble genres, blending action and comedy and on-point satire into a mixture that had absolutely no right to work. So when the director of The LEGO Batman Movie says that The LEGO Movie Sequel will be a musical and a “space action movie,” all you really can do is nod and think “Sure, okay.”
Read More » ‘The LEGO Movie Sequel’ Now In The Hands of ‘Trolls’ Director Mike MitchellPosted on Friday, February 3rd, 2017 by Ethan AndertonEven though The LEGO Movie hit theaters back in 2014, the sequel isn’t arriving until 2019. It was expected to arrive sooner, but Warner Bros. Pictures decided to fast track The LEGO Batman Movie and The LEGO Ninjago Movie in the meantime to hold over building block fans.Plus, it sounds like it may be taking some more time than initially thought to get The LEGO Movie Sequel off the ground. Just last summer the script was slated to get a rewrite from Raphael Bob-Waksberg, the creator of Bojack Horseman, and now the film is replacing previously-set director Rob Schrab with someone who has more animation experience, but not as promising comedy experience. Read More » VOTD: Are These The Best End Credits Sequences in Movies?Posted on Friday, January 6th, 2017 by Ethan AndertonNot too long ago, we highlighted a video that was bold enough to pick the best opening credits sequences from movies.
They left out some that could have easily made the list without any argument, but it was never going to be an easy task.This time, we have a video that tries to accomplish the seemingly easier task of picking the best end credits sequences in movies. We’re not talking about credits scenes or teases like Marvel Studios does but rather credits sequences that both give credit to the cast and crew but also do something stylish and/or fun to end the movie.So what are the best end credits sequences in movies? Read More » ‘The Lego Batman Movie’ Trailer: Move Over, Batfleck, There’s a New Dark Knight in TownPosted on Friday, November 4th, 2016 by Angie HanBen Affleck’s Batman will be back onscreen next year for Justice League, but before we get there we’ll see a completely different version of the Dark Knight, in the form of a tiny plastic minifig voiced by Will Arnett. Yup, we’re just a few months away from the release of The Lego Batman Movie, which picks back up with the endearingly obnoxious take on the character first introduced in 2014’s The Lego Movie.We’ve seen little teases of The Lego Batman Movie here and there over the past several months, and now a brand-new Lego Batman Movie trailer offers our best look yet.
Read More » ‘The Lego Batman Movie’ Trailer Calls Out Batman for His “Unhealthy Behavior” [Comic-Con 2016]Posted on Saturday, July 23rd, 2016 by Angie HanFor this year’s Hall H panel, Warner Bros. brought along not one but two Batmen. There was Ben Affleck for the Justice League presentation, of course — and then there was Will Arnett for The Lego Batman Movie. Arnett and director Chris McKay brought some new The Lego Batman Movie footage and took a few minutes to answer some questions about the movie. Read More » ‘The LEGO Movie Sequel’ Is Getting a Rewrite From ‘BoJack Horseman’ CreatorPosted on Friday, July 8th, 2016 by Jack GirouxPhil Lord and Chris Miller are currently hard at work on their Han Solo film, but before they boarded the Star Wars franchise, the duo may have helped to launch another franchise with The LEGO Movie. After its huge financial success, the Lego movies are now a huge priority for Warner Bros., as they’re working on spinoffs, including one focused on Batman.And there’s also The LEGO Movie Sequel, which will bring back Emmett (Chris Pratt) and Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks).
Lord and Miller aren’t returning to direct the animated film, but they did write the first draft of the script — and BoJack Horseman creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg will now rewrite it.Below, learn more about The LEGO Movie Sequel rewrite. Read More » ‘Doctor Who’ Could Visit ‘The Lego Movie Sequel’Posted on Wednesday, November 4th, 2015 by Angie HanSteven Moffat has been very clear that there are no plans for a Doctor Who movie. But the Doctor, clever creature that he is, may have found another way to make it to the big screen. All it requires is that he take on yet another new form, this time as a tiny plastic minifig. Yup, the Doctor could be coming to 2018’s The Lego Movie Sequel, as teased by director Rob Schrab. Hit the jump for more details. Read More » ‘Lego Batman’ Adds Ralph Fiennes as Alfred PennyworthPosted on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2015 by Angie HanHot off his turn as 007’s boss in Spectre, Ralph Fiennes is getting ready to team up with another iconic badass.
Or the tiny, plastic version of him, anyway. Fiennes has signed on to voice Alfred Pennyworth in the Lego Batman movie, joining Will Arnett as the Lego Caped Crusader. More on the Lego Batman Ralph Fiennes casting after the jump. Read More » The LEGO Movie 4D A New Adventure Will Debut at Legoland in January 2016Posted on Monday, October 12th, 2015 by Peter ScirettaLegoland has announced that a new animated short film based on The LEGO Movie will premiere in January 2016 at Legoland. Hit the jump to learn more about The LEGO Movie 4D A New Adventure, including images from the new film. Read More » Are These the 10 Most Beautiful Animated Films Ever?Posted on Monday, August 10th, 2015 by Ethan AndertonThe technology behind animation has come a long way in a short amount of time, and with the help of state of the art computers, artists are able to create some truly mind-blowing and mesmerizing imagery in feature animation. And this begs, the question: what are the most beautiful animated films ever made?