How many Lego pieces did it take to make The Lego Movie? As it turns out, the film’s creators, directing and writing duo Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, didn’t just rely on actual Legos for the film; as the New York Times pointed out, just the number of bricks required for the task alone would’ve already cost millions of dollars. According to Warner Bros. Pictures, there are a total of 3,863,484 unique Lego bricks seen in the movie. But if you were to recreate the entire film only using Legos, you’d need 15,080,330, the studio said. With a unique blend of CG animation and actual Lego sets, the final look of The Lego Movie has a surprising visual depth; it almost appears as if someone painstakingly animated each and every movement through stop-motion. That’s because the animators went to great lengths to ensure that they included aspects of real Lego pieces when creating their characters. In the video above, which was edited using footage provided by the studio, several animators of the film describe the intricate process of bringing virtual Lego bricks and scenes to life.
“We tried to be quite authentic with the actual Lego product itself,” said CG supervisor Damien Gray. “There’s a lot of detail put into the sticker work, the decal work, the mold lines, chips, chunks, scratches — we tried to incorporate a lot of that.” In order to achieve that “played-with” look for Emmet and the other 182 unique minifigures that appear in the film, animators observed the physical models under microscopes to get every detail right. In addition to scrutinizing the appearance of the Lego bricks themselves, Lord and Miller also took into account other factors they wanted to mimic from stop-motion videos. “If you were animating this in real life, there would be all of these dust particles, and there is a bit of actual dandruff,” Miller told the Times. “We did a little test of how much was too much.” So what else from the film resembles real life? Take a look at this blooper reel in which the Legos (or is it their voiceover actors?) have a little too much fun:
An ordinary Lego construction worker, thought to be the prophesied 'Special', is recruited to join a quest to stop an evil tyrant from gluing the Lego universe into eternal stasis. All Cast & Crew 11 March 2014 | Everything is indeed awesome I'd be surprised if anyone saw this coming. The Lego Movie is quite simply unlike anything seen in a long while: ... Various Lego characters, either original or from licensed properties, make cameos or play bit parts. These include, among others: Johnny Thunder (from the Adventurers line), Lloyd Garmadon the Green Ninja (Ninjago), C-3PO, Han Solo, Chewbacca, and ... ... He's coming, cover your butts. The coloration on President Business's hair is different on the actual figure than it is in the CGI version (note the sideburns). The main-on-end credits were animated in stop-motion, unlike the rest of the movie's CGI. The sequence was created by the studio Alma Mater with Stoopid Buddy Stoodios and took almost a year to produce.
Lego Movie 2 will apparently be a musical set in Spaaace! The 'Lego Movie' Sequel Is Going to Be a Giant Space Musical Check out our Oscars guide for the full list of winners, videos, and more. Shannon Purser Answers Fan Questions Brian d'Arcy James on the Best Picture Fiasco Loni Love Toasts Viola Davis' Win Browse our Guide to the Oscars Dive deep into the Oscars, IMDb Picks, Amazon Originals, and more. The Oscars IMDb Picks Amazon Originals Awards Central TV Scary Good When it comes to evaluating the financial performance of top movies, it isn’t about what a film grosses at the box office. The true tale is told when production budgets, P&A, talent participations and other costs collide with box office grosses, and ancillary revenues from VOD to DVD and TV. To get close to that mysterious end of the equation, Deadline is repeating our Most Valuable Blockbuster tournament, using data culled by seasoned and trusted sources. We’re counting down from No. 20 and will present the data en masse Monday.
THE FILM: A satisfying animated film based on LEGO blocks? This was the other most pleasant and playful franchise launch surprise besides Guardians Of The Galaxy, as minted another franchise to go along with the DC Comics superhero line that will drive its slates for the next five years. It also gave writer-directors and two films in the Top 10 (22 Jump Street is the other), and will keep them busy in coming years with a Batman LEGO spinoff and sequels. How well did it do financially? Let’s take a look: THE BOX SCORE: Here are the costs and revenues as our experts see them: THE BOTTOM LINE: The film accomplished what so many other toy to movie transfers have tried to achieve. Released February 7, the film posted a whopping $69 million opening weekend, and it kept going. It grossed $257 million domestic and $211 million foreign, with no help from China (storyline too subversive?). That $468 million total pales in comparison to many of the films in the Top 20, but the key here is cost and a lack of participation deals that would have depleted the bottom line.
The film’s budget was only $60 million, and you’d have to look at Despicable Me to find a blockbuster animated film that came in at that price point. According to our experts, the talent payouts were healthy for a cast that included Will Arnett, Charlie Day, Jonah Hill, Will Ferrell and Morgan Freeman. Even when factoring in those bonus payments that added $20 million after cash break, The LEGO Movie left $229 million in net profit to Warner Bros, for a stellar Cash on Cash return of 1.80. And sequels and spinoffs to look forward to. Those films will have to factor in bigger paydays for Lord and Miller and returning voice talent, but that is the price of doing blockbuster business. No. 4 – The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 No. 2 – American SniperHow Many Lego Pieces Were Used in 'The Lego Movie'?"According to filmmakers, that would have required 15,080,330 unique physical pieces of the plastic toys."Averaging new parts price in new sets gives around 100€ for 1000 pieces, 10 cents per piece.150,803,300€ But most likely more, as large parts and rare colours add a lot of cost.
As mentioned in Ricardo Marques's answer, the filmmakers quote 15,080,330 LEGO pieces that were used in the movie. 15 million sounds low to me. Take a look at this image of a giant Einstein head in Legoland California:That one's reportedly 1.1 million bricks.This guy's supposedly about 2 million.Legoland California said it took about 20 million bricks to make the entirety of its "Miniland" display (hard to show a single picture of that for scope). That's more than used the LEGO movie?If you ask me, I would guess in the 20-50 million ballpark for the LEGO movie. 15 million seems kinda low. So... something seems missing from this picture.I expect 15 million is how many individual elements were used for RENDERING, not how many you'd need for BUILDING it. For instance, there's a scene in the movie where a LEGO-built ocean surface has waves that rise and fall. But... they only show you the bricks that are on the top. In order to build it in reality, you couldn't have a piece at the top of a wave with nothing underneath it-- you'd have to attach it to something which wouldn't be seen in a rendered image.
So, that might give us at least a ballpark guess for how much raw LEGO material was needed. How much would that cost?In the USA, LEGO pieces usually go for ballpark $0.10 per piece retail, although it can vary greatly depending on many factors. For the LEGO Movie sets, for instance, it varies between about $0.08 per piece and $0.12 per piece, with an average of $0.09 per piece.But if you were building this, you could probably get a good bulk purcahse deal from LEGO. And if LEGO were "buying" them for the LEGO Movie production? It'd be even cheaper. Easily half price if buying externally, probably even less (a lot of the cost of a LEGO set isn't the cost of the pieces, but the very complex production chain).$0.10 per piece:15 million ==> $1,500,00020 million ==> $2,000,00050 million ==> $5,000,000$0.025 per piece:15 million ==> $375,00020 million ==> $500,00050 million ==> $1,250,000So, ok. You've got your pieces, and you've bought them. Now you have a big pile.Now you have to build them.
That takes time, which also costs money!I've clocked myself building sets from instructions between 3.4 to 5.4 seconds per piece, and I'm a pretty fast builder (That might actually sound slow, but a lot of that time is spent reading instructions and searching for the right piece). I expect most people build more slowly-- but then again, if you're repeating the same steps and filling in big chunks of a solid-color wall, it's faster. Let's assume 5 seconds per piece.Depending on which piece count we want to use, we get different estimates of the time needed to assemble them:15 million * 5 seconds => 20,833 person hours20 million * 5 seconds => 27,778 person hours50 million * 5 seconds => 55,556 person hoursNext, how much should we be paying these people? LEGO doesn't exactly pay big bucks for repetitive piece assembly, but I believe it's more than minimum wage. So, it'll cost you a ballpark guess of $200k - $550k to build, plus the cost of the bricks. That puts you between roughly $600k and $5.5M, depending on your assumptions.