As we’ve been saying numerous times since 2014, everything is awesome. Especially if you’re in the business of making movies about small Danish building blocks. With The Lego Movie becoming not just a massive box office and critical smash hit a few years ago, but also a downright cultural phenomenon, Warner Bros have been developing all kinds of sequels and spinoffs. We’ve already seen trailers and images for the next entry in the franchise, The LEGO Batman Movie, and we recently (bad) news about The LEGO Movie 2‘s sequel, but for the two other proposed titles – The Billion Brick Race and The LEGO Ninjago Movie – we’ve heard fairly little.
And we’ll still keep hearing next to nothing for the Jason Segel and Drew Pearce scripted The Billion Brick Race, but at least we have a sizeable update on The LEGO Ninjago Movie today thanks to Brickset (via SlashFilm). They were at the recent Licencing Expo in Las Vegas and there learned of the star-studded lineup of voice actors who will be starring in the animated films.
Leading the bunch is Jackie Chan as Master Wu, Dave Franco as Lloyd, Michael Peña as Kai, Abbi Jacobson as Nya, Kumail Nanjiani as Jay, Zach Woods as Zane, and Fred Armisen as Cole. Along with the casting list, they’ve also learned the film’s first official synopsis:
“Inspired by the wildly popular LEGO line of toys, Ninjago is the story of six young ninja tasked with defending their island home, called Ninjago. By night, they’re gifted warriors, using their skills and awesome fleet of vehicles to fight villains and monsters. By day, they’re ordinary teens struggling against their greatest enemy: high school.”
Ninjago has of course already been adapted for screen as a popular Cartoon Network show titled Ninjago: Masters of Spinjitsu. That show features several of the same characters mentioned here, but with different voice actors. Dan and Kevin Hageman, the writers of the TV series, will be penning the screenplay for the movie as well, but it’s uncertain if the movie will be a continuation of the show or a complete revamp. If I had to hazard a guess though, I would think that this will be a fresh start, especially considering the ad for Ninjago that was on the LEGO Movie blu-ray (and it’s not as if the built-in audience for this are sticklers for rigid continuity).
The LEGO Ninjago movie will be directed by Charlie Bean (Tron: Uprising, Robotboy). It is scheduled for release on September 22, 2017. Before that though, we will be getting our LEGO Batman on on February 10, 2017, while The LEGO Movie sequel has recently been delayed to February 8, 2019, just short of four months before the release of The Billion Brick Race on May 24, 2019.
Last Updated: June 28, 2016
