‘LEGO Batman 2’ Officially Canceled, Here’s Why

The LEGO Batman Movie is only a few years old, but it’s already considered one of the best Batman movies, so it brings no joy to report that a sequel is not going to happen. Director Chris McKay, whose next film The Tomorrow War hits Amazon Prime Video next month, said the LEGO Group’s recent decision to move from Warner Bros. to Universal means Will Arnett probably won’t voice the Caped Crusader again. After The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part disappointed at the box office in 2019, LEGO chose to switch studios for future movies based on the classic building toys.

“Because LEGO has left Warner Brothers and is now over at Universal, there probably won’t be a LEGO Batman sequel, unfortunately. I am so sorry to say that but I don’t think they’ll be making a LEGO Batman 2,” McKay told Collider on Monday. He revealed that writing had started on LEGO Batman Movie 2, with Dan Harmon (Rick & Morty) and Michael Waldron (Loki) co-writing. McKay described their script as “really great.”

“It was truly epic… both from an action standpoint and from a story standpoint,” McKay said. “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.” He also described the film as “Boogie Nights-esque” and it was “going to be really funny.”

While the first LEGO Batman Movie was about Batman building a family, McKay said the sequel would focus on building friendships, handling change, and living on the new path Batman built for himself at the end of the first movie. McKay also revealed that Warner Bros. wanted the movie to lean more into the LEGO realm so it wasn’t completely a straight 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.”

Warner Bros.’ LEGO partnership got off to a great start with 2014’s The LEGO Movie and The LEGO Batman Movie in 2017. However, The LEGO Ninjago Movie (2017) and The Second Part didn’t do as well as the first two films. In April 2020, the LEGO Group announced it was partnering with Universal for future movies, meaning a LEGO Fast and Furious movie or one with Jurassic Park characters is now possible. Sadly, since the five-year Universal-LEGO pact was announced, the two have not formally announced a new project. They better get building on that before they lose the instruction manual.