The Lego Movie 3

The Lego Movie 3 is a upcoming computer-animated comedy film produced by Warner Bros. Pictures Animation and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. It is a sequel The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part  (2019) and the seventh film in the franchise. The film is being directed by Tim Johnson from a script by John August based on creative consultations with Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. The film stars Chris Pratt and Elizabeth Banks returning in his papers as Emmet and Wyldstyle alongside Will Arnett, Alison Brie, Nick Offerman, Charlie Day, Will Ferrell, Stephanie Beatriz and Tiffany Haddish.

Following the release of The Lego Movie 2, Lord and Miller had no immediate intentions of making a third film, though they mentioned plans to begin exploring concepts in January 2018. Warner Bros. began development in late 2019 and Johnson was announced as director in 2020 with August as an associate writer. Pratt and Banks announced they would reprise their roles in 2022 and the rest of the cast was announced in mid-2023. As with all of its previous installments of the franchise, animation was provided by Animal Logic and production took place from August 2022 until the end of 2023 in Vancouver, Canada.

The Lego Movie 3 is scheduled to be released by Warner Bros. Pictures.

Cast

 * Chris Pratt as Emmet Brickowsk
 * Rex Dangervest, as a different variation of Emmet who returns as a cameo from The Lego Movie 2.
 * Elizabeth Banks as Lucy / Wyldstyle
 * Will Arnett as Bruce Wayne / Batman
 * Charlie Day as Benny
 * Alison Brie as Unikitty
 * Nick Offerman as MetalBeard
 * Stephanie Beatriz as Jane
 * Tiffany Haddish as Michel
 * Channing Tatum as Superman
 * Jonah Hill as Green Lantern
 * Cobie Smulders as Wonder Woman
 * Jason Momoa as Aquaman
 * Pierce Gagnon as Will, the son of Emmet and Wyldstyle
 * Jadon Sand as Finn, a young teenager in the real world, who has a voice cameo
 * Phil Lord as Sherry Scratchen-Post, a cat lady
 * Emily Nordwind as Cleopatra
 * Todd Hansen as The Swamp Creature, a gill-man from Lego Monster Fighters
 * Trisha Gum as Velma Dinkley
 * Will Ferrell as President Lord Business
 * The Man Upstairs, a Lego collector who is Finn's father.
 * Will Forte as Abraham Lincoln
 * Margot Rubin as Panda, a panda-masked inhabitant

Development
Before the release of The Lego Movie 2, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller expressed interest in returning to direct and write a third film. By then they had discussed what they would want in a possible follow-up. On August 8, 2018 Dan Lin revealed that a third film of the series is in development but it does not yet have a release date, with Lord and Milller as directors and writters. For 2019, both prepared treatments, however, they decided to change the narrative to be a science fiction adventure that they began to develop in the following months and on July 12, the film was officially announced with Tim Johnson replacing them as director. At that time the production was slow, due to the tight schedule of the writters.

On January 14, 2020, Warner Bros. Pictures officially a release date of February 2, 2024. Dan Lin and Roy Lee were announced as producers a month later, with Lord and Miller serving as executive producers. By the end of June, Lord and Miller had finished a first "volume" of the script they had been working on since 2018, when they got into an argument with August about its plot, who found it interesting and striking. Later that month it was confirmed that Chris Pratt and Elizabeth Banks would be returning, reprising their lead roles from the previous films. As of July 28, Will Arnett was in final talks to play his Batman character. Over the next several weeks, Nick Offerman and Charlie Day confirmed her return and Alison Brie confirmed that she would play Unikitty in a minor role. In June 2021, it was announced that Tiffany Haddish and Stephanie Beatriz had joined the cast as two undisclosed characters, who later revealed themselves to be two girls specializing in astronomy and supernatural things. Australian animation studio Animal Logic, which contributed to the previous films, announced their cooperation on the film as part of an earlier deal. In August 2021, Lord and Miller said that they would be "bringing some eye-catching elements to the table to make the film a completely different experience from its predecessors" and described themselves as "raptured" by the film's concept. In September, Phil expanded by saying that the film would connect with Lego Dimensions (2022) but it would have a story on a much smaller scale, being able to make the characters, the story and the tone, open interpretations of the production team.

Pre-production
In May 2020, it was reported that John August would be working alongside Lord and Miller on the script. When they agreed, they discussed a basic set of ideas they already had for the film, and within the first ten days they began working on the new script and coming up with the basic story, inspired by Star Wars (1977). Miller said the story was influenced by the idea of ​​the uncertainty of extraterrestrial life and was described as a typical 1980s and 1990s sci-fi adventure based on some plot points shown in movies like Independence Day (1996) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). It began with a rough two-page treatment containing basic beats in the initial treatment, included elements of the story that they considered for the previous films in the series or that they considered excessive for a single film. By October 2020, the script was still being written, and August expressed his excitement to do something drastically different from the previous films, feeling that the third act of the film was proving to be more challenging in terms of writing. In November it was announced that the script had been being written on and off for over 6 months up to that point and that final work would begin that week. August also called the film "their version of Aliens", calling the humorous construction of the previous films and the balance between seriousness and Aliens ' "funny, tongue-in-cheek moments" as a similar approach for The Lego Movie 3.

Many central parts of the film were rewritten multiple times. In the original script, the characters of Sweet and Michael were written as traitorous aliens who would help the protagonists. The final battle went through many rewrites, August initially describing it as a battle in space inspired by Return of the Jedi (1983), before being changed to a "more earthy, explosive and monstrous" confrontation for the viewer. In one treatment, entire sequences of the aliens terrorizing different groups of characters were written, but were later cut because were deemed "unnecessary to show the spectacle of the film" and an arc inspired by a "serialized Godzilla"-like creature for the film had also been originally written intohowever, it was quickly scrapped early in development.

Production
In February 2021, production was scheduled to begin that same year at the Animal Logic studio in Vancouver, Canada and by August it entered the process after various screenings and suggestions, and a five-month evaluation. Animation and production took a year and a half, with around 48 animators involved in the film. Rendering took 26 hours, and it took three weeks of animation to create ten seconds of additional footage. They called the final battle the most difficult sequence to do, with particles, colors and multiple moving objects in each microshot. The design reflected scenes from Lego Batman (2017), and was emphasized by free form techniques. Around 300 different Headquarters designs were developed. The production of the film took advantage of Animal Logic's latest update to its trace renderer, Glimpse, to improve on-screen detail and depth-of-field. The production of the film concluded in March 2023, after 19 months. Lord and Miller were inspired by the design of The Thing (1982) for the creatures. The overall design of The Lego Movie 3 drew heavily on influences from the neon aesthetic, prominent in the 1950s, as well as LED lighting, converting actual light from a geometry, and styling it with "sprite-like and golden" modifications. Using scaling progressions they measured the size of the world build of the main characters.

Post-production
In November 2023, Clare Knight was revealed to be serving as the editor, after previously working on the franchise during post-production on Lego Dimensions (2022). In June of that year, Channing Tatum, Cobie Smulders and Jonah Hill revealed that they would play Superman, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern, respectively. Voice recording began in late 2022 and ended in mid-2023, with some scenes re-recorded for re-takes after Comic-Con.

Music
Lorne Balfe was revealed to be composing the score by July 2023, after previously working in Lego Batman (2017).

Release
The Lego Movie 3 was originally scheduled for release on February 2, 2024, but due to the ongoing 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike, the film was delayed to a last date.