Once upon a time in Hollywood, “The Lego Movie” felt it was going to be the second-coming of animation as the first installment was a decent financial success raking in $468 million and led to a somewhat successful spinoff, “The Lego Batman Movie” directed by Chris McKay earning an impressive $312 million globally.
The filmmaker is doing press rounds to help promote his new sci-fi action film “The Tomorrow War,” starring the internet’s punching bag and “The Lego Movie” star Chris Pratt. While speaking with Collider, he brought up his unmade sequel to “The Lego Batman Movie” with “Rick & Morty” writers Dan Harmond and Michael Waldron penning the first draft.
“It was truly epic—both from an action standpoint and from a story standpoint. The structure was Godfather Part II… a story about Batman’s relationship to the Justice League (and Superman) now as well as the formative moments of the Justice League (and Batman’s relationship with Superman) then,” McKay told Collider about their plans for the scrapped sequel.
The varied character lineup seemed to be Batman, Robin, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Superman, Lois Lane alongside villains such as Lex Luthor and OMAC, as pointed out by the filmmaker.
The director enthusiastic mentioned a handful of heroes and villains that would have appeared, leading to a big crossover, “The villain was going to be Lex Luthor and OMAC. There’s more, of course (lots of Aquaman, Wonder Woman, Lois). There was also going to be a big crossover at one point in the movie that you can only do in a Lego movie. I’m sure you can guess what it was. The thing that will probably never happen in a live-action movie.”
Sadly, because of Lego moving from Warner Bros. to Universal Pictures, McKay is certain that a second film being picked up is extremely unlikely. However, it doesn’t sound like the director and studio always saw eye-to-eye.
READ MORE: ‘LEGO Batman’ Director Chris McKay To Direct Live-Action ‘Jonny Quest’
“The studio was leery of “Lego Batman” being an actual Batman movie, so I was constantly told to hold back. Audiences (and subsequent movies like ‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse‘) proved them wrong. I would have quadrupled down on making it as much of a real “Justice League” movie,” McKay said of a frustrating development process with Warner Bros. trying to get them to allow him to do more than just a parody film with branded Lego figures.
Michael Waldron is getting some exposure recently for working on the “Loki” series, working together with Sam Raimi on the script for “Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness,” and an untitled “Star Wars” film produced by Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige. In a cheeky response to the interview, Waldron shared on Twitter (See below) what he says is the title page from the script that teased it would have included silly superhero siblings The Wonder Twins and potentially references to Paul Thomas Anderson‘s porn industry drama “Boogie Nights.” The “Boogie Nights” homage was also something echoed by McKay in the Collider interview.
“The Tomorrow War” will drop exclusively on Amazon Prime Video on July 2.