The Lego Movie 3

The Lego Movie 3 is a 2024 American computer-animated comedy film. Produced by Warner Animation Group and Animal Logic and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, it is the seventh film in the LEGO Extended Universe and the sequel to The Lego Movie (2014) and The Lego Movie 2 (2017). Directed and written by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who co-wrote the script alongisde John August, stars an ensemble cast including Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Alison Brie, Nick Offerman and Charley Day reprising their roles from the previous installments. In the film, Emmet Brickowski (Pratt), Wyldstyle (Banks) and their friends team up to save the world from the catastrophic threat of an alien army, which is out to destroy the planet in order to colonize it.

Lord and Miller had discussed plans for a sequel by January 2017 and the ideas for the film began in 2018. The film was announced in July 2018, with Pratt and Banks in early negotiations to return. Lord and Miller wanted to differentiate the film from their previous installments, seeking to make a film inspired by the typical science fiction of the 1980s. They adapted elements of the filmography of Steven Spielberg and Star Wars. August came on board to contribute to the script in February 2020, with the further casting revealed later that year. Production began in early 2021 in Vancouver, Canada, delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and concluded at the beginning of May 2023.

The Lego Movie 3 premiered in Los Angeles on January 27, 2024, and was released in the United States on February 2, 2024 in Dolby Cinema, RealD 3D, IMAX and IMAX 3D.

Plot
A year has passed since the Battle of Metropolis, and following the invasion led by the now defeated Darkside, Emmet, Wyldstyle, and their friends return to their normal lives. Now the group and their world are perplexed when a massive alien mothership enters Earth's orbit and deploys multiple flying saucers, destroying everything in its path. Amidst the chaos, the group splits up, with Wyldstyle and others being abducted by the hideous aliens, running against time to escape and destroy the ship from inside. On land, Emmet and Benny team up with two super-intelligent girls, Jane and Michael, with no choice but to fight the invaders face-to-face. All of them must now embark on a survival journey through different strange and unknown situations to stop the evil creatures, survive and find themselves again in the process. This may be their toughest adventure yet.

Cast
Also, Channing Tatum, Cobie Smulders and Jonah Hill repeat their roles as Superman, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern, respectively, in larger roles for the plot. Other supporting characters returning from films in the franchise include Liam Neeson as Scribble Cop, Todd Hansen as Gandalf, and Ralph Fiennes as Alfred Pennyworth.
 * Chris Pratt as Emmet Brickowsky: an everyman, ex-construction worker, and a Master Builder from Bricksburg.
 * Elizabeth Banks as Wyldstyle: She is a master builder and Emmet's wife. Her real name is Lucy, and it is hinted that she kept changing her name due to insecurity from her past about it.
 * Will Arnett as Bruce Wayne/Batman: A Gotham City Superhero and Master Builder. Arnett pointed out that, after his participation in the events of Lego Dimensions (2022), Batman completely left his facet of someone isolated and is one of those who wants to "[discover] how to move forward".
 * Tiffany Haddish as Michael: An astronomer and Jane's best friend.
 * Stephanie Beatriz as Jane: An astronomer and conspiracy commander. She is Michael's best friend, and comic relief.
 * Charlie Day as Benny: A Master Builder who is a spaceship-obsessed 1980s spaceman. You found with the previous two installments of the trilogy, act like someone more serious and specialist.
 * Alison Brie as Unikitty: A unicorn-horned cat and Master Builder.
 * Nick Offerman as MetalBeard, a Master Builder who is a large bionic pirate with a severed head after he lost his original body in an earlier encounter with Lord Business' forces.
 * Tenoch Huerta as Norwegian: A thinking supercomputer, which acts as a plot point to defeat the "Aliens".

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 third film. For 2018, 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 July 12, the film was officially announced. At that time the production was slow, due to the tight schedule of the directors. They cited a lack of time to direct and write as a reason the film's development was convoluted in the early stages.

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.

Writing
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 what it would be like to wake up and discover unknown beings potentially dangerous to everyone with no ability to communicate with them. In addition, the film was described as a typical 1970s and 1980s sci-fi adventure. It began with a rough two-page treatment containing basic beats and rough character sketches, showing the plot as a monster spectacle while They continued to create a story with recognizable characters.

In the initial treatment, they had included elements of the story that they considered for the previous films in the series or that they considered excessive for a single film. The script took a year to develop and although it ended up being the same as the final film, some lines were changed, revised and improved during filming and post-production, including more details about the integration of the villains in the universe; for this they were based on some plot points shown in movies like Independence Day (1996) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). 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, as many of the arcs of the story converged and needed to be resolved. In November 2020 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. Lord and Miller 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 originally written as acquaintances, however they were changed in later drafts for story consistency and to act as newly added lead characters. The final battle went through many rewrites, Lord and Miller 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 due to presumed suspicion and because they were deemed "unnecessary to show the spectacle of the film", an arc inspired by the film had also been originally written. into a "serialized Godzilla"-like creature, however, 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 May it entered the process after various screenings and suggestions, and a three-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

For the creatures in the film, their designs were required to give off an evil presence and evoke a sense of the grotesque, stating "These characters can't look like another kind of super-intelligent alien in big spaceships. Most of Hollywood has that covered. These have to be different, weird and creepy, but not terrifying." Lord and Miller were inspired by the design of The Thing (1982) for the creatures, the sketches made it seem that emotions were superior, even though the rules were broken within such limits. The directors instructed the designers to look at the designs of various creatures from movies of yesteryear and "distill those silhouettes and those key features into something more modern and fit for an animated comedy movie." It was considered important that the creatures be conveyed as dangerous entities to the characters and not as "especially sentient beings". For the color palette I tried to stick to faithful blue and phosphor lilac, designed to make them look fearsome.

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. To design the Mothership, smooth rock elements were added to make it look like a living thing, similar to the tripods from War of the Worlds (2005).

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
In September 2022, it was revealed that Lorne Balfe would be the film's composer, return to the franchise after working on Lego Batman.

Marketing
Lord and Miller and the cast and directors promoted the film at the 2023 San Diego Comic-Con along with the debut of the teaser trailer on July 22, 2023. The teaser featured a remastered version of singer Tiffany Darwish's cover of "I Think We're Alone Now" from 1987. Both Leah Simpson and Giovana Gelhoren of People called the footage "powerful and engaging", while it commemorated 1980s pop culture. Writing for IndieWire, Christian Zilko also felt that the trailer commemorated 1980s style and opined that this presented a challenge for the film, with the way of presenting itself to please the masses. Carson Burton and J. Kim Murphy of Variety felt that the most striking thing about the teaser was its neon visual tone, noting the presence of the film's villains at the end of the tease. The teaser tráiler received 177 million views in its first 24 hours of release, the largest for a franchise film and the second-largest ever for an animated film. The construction sets of the film were revealed on the same day.

Release
The Lego Movie 3 is scheduled to be released in the United States on February 2, 2024.

Box office
The Lego Movie 3 earned $392.4 million in the United States and Canada and $496.6 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $889 million. It became the 5th highest-grossing film of 2024 and the 16th-highest-grossing animated film of all time. The film surpassed its predecessor's gross ($541.1 million) in its third weekend and became the second-highest-grossing film in the franchise a week later, behind Lego Dimensions. It had a worldwide opening weekend of $272.7 million, with a IMAX debut of $25.2 million. Deadline Hollywood calculated the net profit for the film to be $351.2 million, when factoring together "production budgets, P&A, talent participations and other costs, with box office grosses, and ancillary revenues from VOD to DVD and TV," placing it third on their list of 2024's "Most Valuable Blockbusters". The Lego Movie 3 proved to be a front-loader, going down hard in its second weekend though leveling off in its third, following the same pattern as its immediate predecessor, Lego Dimensions.

Projections for its opening weekend in the United States and Canada were being continuously revised upwards starting from $100 million to as high as $150 million. Earned $19.2 million on its Thursday night previews and topped the box office on its opening day with $72 million (including $21 million for Thursday night showings). During its opening weekend, The Lego Movie 3 took the top spot with $141.1 million. It was the second-biggest debut for the franchise and the second-best for February, however, the film saw a steep Friday-to-Saturday decline, grossing $29.5 million (a drop of 47%). After its debut weekend, the film faced a steep 68.8% drop in its second weekend, earning an estimated $44.0 million, experiencing a decline similar to that of Lego Dimensions. Forbes said that it was "becoming a trend" for the franchise due to its "front-loaded nature". After two weeks of holding the top spot, in its third weekend earned $31.5 million (a small drop of 28%) and finishing in third place.

Internationally, The Lego Movie 3 secured a release in approximately 62 countries. Based on tracking, the film was projected to open between $95 million and $150 million. As of Sunday, February 4, it delivered a five-day opening of $145.3 million from 57 countries on 17,630 screens. It added $71.3 million in its second weekend, a 51% drop from 15,600 screens. The film had a late release in China on February 23 and had an opening weekend of $51 million. Variety highlighted that Lego Dimensions had the advantage of receiving a coveted day-and-date release with China, while The Lego Movie 3 did not secure an initial release date in the country. Its largest markets were China ($115.3 million), the United Kingdom ($42.4 million) and France ($37.6 million).

Critical response
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 84% based on 347 reviews, with an average rating of 7/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "While not as dazzling as its predecessors, The Lego Movie 3 fits right into the franchise, with an emotional story, heart and humor to spare." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average of 79 out of 100, based on 47 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported filmgoers gave it a 87% overall positive score. The Lego Movie 3 received positive response from critics, who, while considering it inferior to its two predecessors, called it one of the best films in the franchise, praising the cast's animation and voice acting, the musical score, and the action sequences.