Fox Searchlight Pictures
Check out an update about this great Lego mystery, after the break!
Red alert, red alert, people, this is not a drill! This is either some seriously misunderstood marketing or a big hint at one of the most welcome, charming and unexpected Lego sets of all time. Are you ready? Are you even sitting down, perhaps on a velvet-covered divan while wearing your finest vintage military uniform and mourning a lost love? Good.
Yesterday afternoon, an email from Think Jam, a digital marketing agency whose clients include some big Hollywood studios ‐ like Fox Searchlight Pictures, information that will come in handy soon ‐ started circulating among entertainment journalists. It was a mass send-out, it came with a simple subject line (“The Grand Budapest Hotel”) and it contained just one thing, a single graphic that ostensibly advertises Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel (perhaps pushing the film’s imminent home release?) but that also includes a pink Lego brick as its focal point. Here, take a look!
Fox Searchlight Pictures
That’s it, that’s the entirety of the email.
Both The Grand Budapest Hotel and The LEGO Movie are hitting home release next Tuesday ‐ but as Grand Budapest is a Fox release and The LEGO Movie is a Warner Bros. release, there’s little reason for the agency tasked with marketing a Fox film would send out a mass email that hinges on the release of another studio’s film.
Or, yes, this could all just be wishful thinking.
Brickipedia (which, yes, is basically Wikipedia for Lego nerds, and of which I am a frequent visitor) has zero mention of the even the possibility of a Grand Budapest Hotel set. The site shares plenty of rumors, from what upcoming sets will consist of to the dates we can expect to see them, which is why I basically lurked on the site for months, constantly checking the “rumored” release date of the “Spaceship, Spaceship, SPACESHIP!!!” set from The LEGO Movie. Nothing mentioning Grand Budapest pops up there, and that’s pretty much the first place a rumor like this would land (if it had any credence).
The only mentions of a “Grand Budapest Hotel Lego” that show up from an Google search relate directly to this email. When it comes to movie-centric Legos, the company typically sticks to more sci-fi and superhero-based sets, like their big Star Wars sets, the obvious LEGO Movie sets, and plenty of Marvel heroes. Lego has never made a Wes Anderson-based set (although you can check out some unofficial Lego sets around the web, especially this amazing and quite well-known Royal Tenenbaums creation), and the good thing about Lego in general is that you can absolutely make your own versions of your favorite movies, television shows and other bits of pop culture.
Still, an official Grand Budapest Hotel set would be pretty remarkable and a surefire hit among both Anderson fans and Lego aficionados.
We’ve reached out to Think Jam for comment, and will be sure to update this piece when we hear back (even if they crush our dreams and tell us this was just some cheeky marketing and to stop dreaming about having our own miniature Grand Budapest Hotel in our homes, as rendered by pink Lego bricks).
Update: /Film’s Germain Lussier (also a fellow Lego lover) has piped in on Twitter, reporting that “It’s not [a Lego set]. It’s an installation at the Grove, not a mass set.” You can read more about that right here. We’re still waiting for an official word from Think Jam, and no, we’re not letting our dreams of a set go just yet.
Update 2: Kabam:
