Much like the LEGO Batman Movie, a LEGO Star Wars Movie would be an easy way to dive deep into the Star Wars lore, bring new fans into the fold, and poke fun at the franchise while still playing tribute to it. Unfortunately, common sense says there’s no way fans are getting what they want – and what the world needs.
The problem is simple: it’s a matter of who owns the rights. And the simple answer is: Not Disney. In 2020 Universal signed a five-year exclusive film partnership deal with the Lego Group, the Danish company behind the popular toy, paving the way for a new series of films. This was made possible after the Lego Group’s deal with previous partner, Warner Bros., who produced four movies (The LEGO Movie, The LEGO Batman Movie, The LEGO Ninjago Movie, and The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part), expired.
For Warner Bros. it made sense to let go. After the first LEGO movie was a smashing success, and the LEGO Batman Movie held up well as a sequel, the LEGO Ninjago Movie and the LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part saw severely diminished returns, underperforming when compared with other Warner Bros. animated movies geared towards the same audience.
For Universal, however, it was also a no-brainer. Despite the declining box office, when Warner Bros. let the deal expire, Universal saw this new exclusive partnership as a way to inject new life into the LEGO movie brand, and their gamble might indeed pay off. Imagine a LEGO Jurassic Park movie, for example. It’s hard to believe fans wouldn’t jump at the chance for something like that, especially considering the favorable response to the television special Jurassic World: The Secret Exhibit and the miniseries Lego Jurassic World: Legend of Isla Nublar.
But as far as the possibility of a LEGO Star Wars movie, the exclusive deal makes that next to impossible – at least for the next few years. There would be, after all, no incentive for Universal to collaborate with Disney in this regard to bring a LEGO Star Wars movie to the big screen when it has a lot of properties it can use in combination with LEGO. How does LEGO Despicable Me sound? LEGO Kung Fu Panda?
On the surface, this shouldn’t be a big loss to Star Wars fans. The franchise has a lot of new content coming on Disney+, with animated series The Bad Batch set to premiere on May 4th, as well as the Obi-Wan Kenobi series, The Book of Boba Fett, an animated shorts story titled Visions expected this year, and a whole host of other series like Andor, Ahsoka, and Rangers of the New Republic expected in the next few years, at most. But none of these projects promise the fun or the opportunity for Star Wars to make fun of itself and attract new fans that a LEGO Star Wars movie would.
Think back to LEGO Batman, for example. Batman is a pretty famous character, and most people already have an opinion about him. The LEGO Batman Movie didn’t try to run away from that. Instead, it showed that it understood what people’s expectations were, and it managed to subvert them by facing them head-on. The movie isn’t funny because it makes fun of Batman, it’s funny because Batman is in on the LEGO joke.
This could easily be achieved with the Star Wars franchise too, as the LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special proved. The special, which debuted around Christmas 2020, is silly, fun, and never takes itself too seriously, just what Star Wars needed for any content set after The Rise of Skywalker. There are continuity jokes aplenty, Rey, Finn, Poe and even BB-8 make their expected appearances, alongside a few – or a lot of – characters that make absolutely no sense, and yet fans wanted to see. And it all works.
LEGO and Star Wars are not just a one-time partnership, either. Perusing through Disney+ will bring up a whole host of LEGO and Star Wars collaborations, from LEGO Star Wars Droid Tales, to LEGO Star Wars The Resistance Rises, without forgetting LEGO Star Wars All-Stars. A LEGO Star Wars movie would just be a continuation of this idea, that the franchise can, sometimes, also have fun at its own expense. It’s something the world needs, but also something Star Wars could desperately use after so many serious, controversial movies.
Whether fans liked what The Last Jedi tried to bring to the franchise, or they lean more on the side of what The Rise of Skywalker ended up establishing, a LEGO Star Wars movie would have something for everyone. It has the potential to be the kind of thing that appeals to not just existing fans, but that creates a new generation of fans ready to consume all the content the franchise has to offer.
However, it’s pretty clear that, despite how much fans might want a LEGO Star Wars movie, it’s easier to just give it up and put this one on the list of things the world really needs but won’t get. Business is business, and this time, the business isn’t on the side of fans getting this movie.