The future of the Lego film franchise isn’t yet written in stone, but what’s certain is that there are a number of studio execs out there really excited at the prospect of making movies about multi-colored, plastic blocks. The first studio to fire a shot in the Lego arms race was Warner Bros., who hired Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs helmers Phil Lord and Chris Miller to write and direct Lego: The Movie, or whatever they’re going to end up calling it. Despite the fact that making movies based on a line of building blocks is completely asinine, Lord and Miller’s take on the material sounded like a case of the best being made out of a ridiculous situation; as they’ve actually come up with a promising story.
But suddenly they’re not the only players in the Lego game. Now Universal wants to get their hands on a Lego property of their own, in order to prove that they’re the only name in town when it comes to basing horrible movies off of inanimate children’s toys. Heat Vision is reporting that they’re in negotiations with The Lego Group to bring their line of Hero Factory toys to the big screen.
Before you go moaning and groaning at the thought of Universal putting out another Battleship, know that there’s a silver lining to this cloud. Unlike the peg-based board game movie that didn’t do so hot last weekend, Lego Hero Factory is actually a line of toys that has its own pre-established characters and mythology. Currently the studio is negotiating with Predators writers Michael Finch and Alex Litvak to pen a script for a live-action film, which will presumably stick to telling the story of a space factory that churns out robotic heroes tasked with battling an intergalactic evil.
This news puts us in the interesting position of dreading a project not because it’s based off of a stupid kids’ toy, but because it’s being put together by the guys who wrote Predators. Plus, it now seems like a safer bet to be looking forward to the movie that’s just about plastic blocks rather than the movie that’s about intergalactic warriors that happen to be made out of plastic blocks. What a time to be alive.