Chris McKay spreads the legend of Dan Harmon’s canned Lego Batman Movie 2 script
The "Lego Superfriends" does have a certain ring to it—unfortunately, it was never meant to be
Film News Dan Harmon
When someone thinks they have a good sequel on their hands, they do one of two things: Compare it to The Godfather: Part II or compare it to The Empire Strikes Back. Tomorrow War and Lego Batman Movie director Chris McKay is doing the former. He’s also throwing around the name Dan Harmon like chum into the water. It’s not something people do to promote sequels, but it’s sure to whet appetites for a fish dinner that’s never coming.
In a recent interview with Collider, McKay divulged a couple of juicy morsels about the all but dead sequel to his 2017 Lego Batman Movie. Written by Dan Harmon and Michael Waldron, McKay says the script resembles, get this, The Godfather: Part II and Boogie Nights, which we assume is about Batman’s monster hog and not his cunnilingus skills because Batman does not eat out—he only gets drive-thru.
“Dan [Harmon] and [Michael] Waldron had done a first draft of the script that was really great,” McKay said. “It was truly epic…both from an action standpoint and from a story standpoint. The structure was Godfather Part 2… 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.”
Unfortunately, we’ll probably never see this movie. In 2020, Universal acquired the rights to Lego, opening the possibility for Harry Potter and Dominic Toretto to make appearances in Lego movies, but not members of the Warner Bros library. This also explains, we assume, why the nuns from Ken Russell’s The Devils appear in the Space Jam sequel (you can’t let IP go to waste— it spoils).
Even more disheartening, McKay said that the sequel, bolstered by the success of Into The Spider-Verse, would have been even more of an actual Batman movie. “The studio was leery of Lego Batman being an actual Batman movie so I was constantly told to hold back,” he said. “Audiences, and subsequent movies like Into the Spider-Verse, proved them wrong. I would have quadrupled down on making it as much of a real Justice League movie with lots of jokes, cameos, intersecting storylines, references, etc—it would have been a very dense movie as humanly possible.” He continues:
“We had lots of great voice actors from The LEGO Movie and LEGO Batman. 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.”
Now joining David Lynch’s Return Of The Jedi and Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon, Dan Harmon’s Lego Batman is in the pantheon of movies that never got made, but people will wonder about it for the rest of time. Well, maybe it’s not in that pantheon, but we do wish we could’ve seen it. At least, co-writer Michael Waldron shared the extremely very good cover page for the screenplay. Enjoy the cover. It’s all we’re getting.
23 Comments
“In 2020, Universal acquired the rights to Lego, opening the possibility for Harry Potter and Dominic Toretto to make appearances in Lego movies, but not members of the Warner Bros library.”Is this 2020’s final “fuck you” to us all?Also, when did Universal acquire Harry Potter rights? I thought WB made those movies.
WB did make those movies, and still owns the rights. I think the author is confusing the fact that there’s Harry Potter attractions at Universal Studios theme parks with Universal actually owning the rights.Methinks a correction to the article should be made.
It might be Universal currently owns the multimedia rights, while WB still has the rights to the movies it made, though they can’t make any more films under the current agreement. This is all speculation on my part.
Universal licensed the theme park rights from Warner Bros., and that is the source of the confusion.
Yeah, I knew the Universal park in Orlando has a whole “Harry Potter World,” and I can’t imagine Warner would be stupid enough to let those film rights lapse — there still doing the Fantastic Beasts franchise, aren’t they?But leave it to AT&T to be dumb enough to let the LEGO rights go. This must have been part of the same stupid thought process that went into canceling The Venture Bros.
WB are (or were) developing a Funko Pop Movie, so maybe Harmon’s script can be tweaked for The Funko Batman Movie spin-off?
A Funko Pop movie sounds to be as sure-fire a winner as the Playmobil Movie
I feel sorry for the employees who had to walk into the offices of Playmobil Movie Inc the Monday after Lego Movie 2 underperformed.
As a real die-hard Batman fan, I loved the Lego Batman movie. The first few minutes turned me off (primarily the workout mix music sequence), but after that I was on board. The constant references to Batman’s history (especially my beloved B:TAS), Bane having Hardy’s voice, etc. were all wonderful, along with the characters from other franchises. Bummed there won’t be a sequel.
My expectations were very low for this one and I was completely blown away, easily becoming my favorite lego movie (theyre all great though tbh.) Knowing Dan Harmon wrote this makes this hurt even more
The ‘Who’s the (Bat)man’ song? But it was great! The use of the ‘66 theme in the chorus! The lyrics! “Turn Two-Face to black-and-blue faceI 100% am not Bruce Wayne”
Who always pays his Taxes? NOT Batman!
I also love that song.
Love it. My only slight reservation about it is the elements they brought in from other WB franchises. Now do I enjoy seeing Batman fight Gremlins? Yes, and you could say this is the one chance to see it happen. But it seems a shame to have all these classic Batman villains in a film where they’re not going to be self-conscious about them being too gimicky or campy and barely use them. They even bring in Billy Dee Williams as Two-Face and he only gets two lines!
They even bring in Billy Dee Williams as Two-Face and he only gets two lines!One for each face!
That’s what held me back from loving the film too, even though I was thinking “Batman and Robin are spoofing The Matrix Reloaded fight scene against a bunch of Agents with Batman ‘66 fight sounds on the screen and they’re also fighting gremlins and daleks? Was I the focus group for this film?”. But I’d still have preferred a straight Batman film set in a Lego universe. The IP stuff felt like it belonged (and worked better) in the main Lego Movies.
I thought some other nerd would say it, but Bane’s voice was Doug Benson doing his over the top Tom Hardy impersonation. I agree with everything else you said though. 🙂
I don’t know, I like Dan Harmon for the most part but I’m wary of writer changes for sequels and plus the first one was just such a great little one-and-done that I also think any sequel would inevitably undermine it. Would I watch it if it did happen? Sure. Will I mourn it not happening? Nah.
“The studio was leery of Lego Batman being an actual Batman movie so I was constantly told to hold back,”I will never understand this approach from studios. As little faith as I sometimes have in humanity I know people are still smart enough to distinguish that there can be multiple versions of a character in existence at the same time. Lego Batman isn’t going to woefully confuse people who wanted more of live action Batman.
Studio execs overthink (and ruin) everything.
This has been a particularly thorny issue with Warner Bros. when it comes to Batman and has been for quite some time. Batman characters weren’t allowed to be used in Justice League Unlimited because The Batman started airing and WB execs were afraid it would confuse people. The showrunners had to fight tooth and nail just be allowed to even use Batman himself in JLU.
That sounds interesting. I thought the first Lego Batman was just mildly okay, but would have been up for a sequel.
There are times when Spider-Man appeared in at least three of his own titles and was in the Fantastic Four probably in the same week. Now that we have several different Batman universes (Leto/Phoenix, Pattinson/whoever is in the James Gunniverse one with Leto/Michael Keaton in The Flash) it’s weird that this would be such a concern, especially about a Lego movie.
Lego Batman was a blast. I was looking forward to the sequel.Then again, The Lego Movie was also fun, but the sequel was awwwwful. So maybe we’re better off without another Lego Batman.