Disney Enterprises, Inc.
Jason Segel, who previously helped reboot the Muppet movies, is now on to another beloved children’s property that’s already well into its own film franchise. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Segel will co-write and co-direct The Billion Brick Race, which is a spinoff of some kind in the LEGO Movie universe.
We don’t know if any of the characters from The LEGO Movie are involved, similar to The LEGO Batman Movie, nor do we know any details of the plot whatsoever. Many are presuming this animated movie will be in the spirit of long-range race movies, like The Great Race and The Cannonball Run. Because it has the word “race” in the title. But maybe it’s actually about race, like Crash but with LEGO bricks.
Joining Segel in this branded entertainment is not his regular collaborator Nicholas Stoller but Drew Pearce, writer of Iron Man 3 and the upcoming Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, who will also co-write and co-direct. The two have worked together before, on the as-yet-unmade remake of the documentary The Other F Word. It’s the feature directorial debut for both.
Here’s what I would love to see this be: yes, a movie about a race, maybe around the world, with a number of teams competing for whatever. Each team consists of characters from a different other branded property, such as Star Wars, DC Superheroes, etc. Maybe even LEGO versions of the Muppets, if Disney could agree to that. And another team consisting of Emmet and WyldStyle and other friends introduced in The LEGO Movie.
I’m of course thinking of the Laff-A-Lympics, the late-’70s Saturday Morning Cartoon series that brought all of Hanna-Barbera’s animated characters into a shared-universe competition. Also all-star ensemble comedies like It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. It certainly wouldn’t surprise me to hear that Segel was a fan of that movie.