Get Moving With LEGO Vehicle Sets My Review of the Meccano Meccanoid XL 2.0 Personal Robot My Review of the Meccanoid 2.0 Personal RobotHow 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. From a Russian LEGO catalog, we have our very first look at LEGO’s Angry Birds sets from the upcoming movie, which ought to at least please fans who wanted the big L to swipe the construction-toy licenses from K’NEX. On first glance, the pig structures seem a lot sturdier than in the game, though the sets do include slingshot mechanisms, and the castle features a trigger that, when hit, releases the eggs. Only one of the pigs in the movie seems to have a name — Leonard (Bill Hader) — but the white bird is named Matilda (Maya Rudolph), and the yellow bird is named Chuck (Josh Gad).
Stella (Kate McKinnon) is already pretty well established in canon by an actual moniker, unlike most who are usually referred to by color, so I don’t know if “Red” really qualifies as a name, since it’s a descriptor as well. I’d venture to say that these sets may have captured the look of the game even better than the movie trailer we’ve seen so far — which ought to give fans hope that there’s plenty of good stuff we haven’t seen yet. That house set with Stella, above, looks just precarious enough to topple in the right way. Best of all, with all LEGO being compatible across brands, think of the crossovers. I for one am going to use one of those slingshots to send LEGO Jar Jar right into the wall. Do these images make you more optimistic about the movie, or just anxious to buy more LEGO? And what if a green pig steals the Piece of Resistance and becomes the Special? You know the Bizness; tell us in comments what you think.The LEGO Movie, which opens this weekend, stars LEGO Batman, LEGO Superman, LEGO Wonder Woman, and LEGO Green Lantern.
Past LEGO sets have re-created The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, the Harry Potter movies, and many other franchises. But true LEGO fans don't sit around waiting for the Danish company to get around to adapting their favorite movies or characters into toys: These LEGO fiends often custom build their own sets, hand-painting minifigs (that's LEGO people, to the uninitiated) and re-creating famous pop-culture buildings, landscapes, and vehicles to turn their favorite blockbusters into blocks. (Sometimes LEGO even turns these inspired fan-made creations into actual sets: see the now-official Ghostbusters and The Simpsons sets, and the Back to the Future DeLorean.) Delve into the online world of LEGO heads and you might find a few fascinating creations — some just proudly displayed, some for sale at Etsy. Here's a selection of the best. Does cheesecake made from LEGO taste as good as the real thing? You'll have to create this Golden Girls set to find out.Still bald in this Fast and the Furious mod.
The hats and the sax are totally custom in this Blues Brothers set. A mod version of The Shining has everything down: from the patterned hallway carpet to Shelley Duvall's terrified face. This incredible LEGO Walter White? You can buy it on Etsy. In case it was unclear, this is Frasier. Just missing LEGO tossed salad and LEGO scrambled eggs.Gertie got into the LEGO set, again. There Will Be Blood! There also will be a full There Will Be Blood cast of minifigs. This Home Alone set has everything you need: flamethrower, tarantula, crowbar, and a lovely cheese pizza (just for me). Ron Burgundy's signature suit even looks good in LEGO. In case you were wondering, the Fonz's LEGO locks look fantastic in this Happy Days set. Tough to tell whether that's LEGO Arnold or LEGO Al at the restaurant door, though. There's something about a LEGO King Joffrey from Game of Thrones that really accentuates his young age ... Never thought I'd see a Judge Judy LEGO minifig, but life surprises you sometimes.