HOMEWORK: The Lego Movie

Evaluate the impact of media ownership on the media texts which get produced – Lego Movie

The Lego movie was distributed by Warner Bros, a major player in the motion picture industry. Dan Lin, a Taiwanese-born American film producer, was the most responsible person when it came to distributing The Lego Movie. In 2008 Lin left Warner Bros as an executive to become CEO in his own company “Lin Pictures”. Lin and producer Roy Lee began discussing the idea.

Dan is known to have researched Lego heavily before he pitched the idea to them and had to convince them it would be success. Following the release, The Lego Movie challenged the balance between the medium of film and marketing techniques, just as Transformers: Age of extinction (2014) also did.

Lin Pictures were the primary production company on The Lego Movie and Warner Bros acted as the distributors. Thanks to the Lego Movie, Warner Bros became a major player in animation. The Lego Movie helped Warner Bros gain critical success at the box office which they had been lacking.

The budget for The Lego Movie was an estimated $60,000,000. According to the BoxOfficeMoJo, the film had a gross of over $311 million. Due to the films large success, Lin, Lee, Lord and miller all went onto produce the following Lego films; the Lego Batman Movie and The Lego Ninjago Movie (both released in 2017).

In addition, The Lego Movie also released numerous posters prior to the release of the film. These posters were designed to attract a wide audience ranging from children to adults and families. The production team tactically released each poster slowly over a longer space of time. This allowed tension to be built up with fans before the release as it made them want to know how each poster linked with one another.

Finally, The Lego Movie also teamed up with ITV to create a special Lego themed ad break which featured popular adverts such as “confused.com”, BT Broadband and British Heart Foundation aired but in Lego opposed to real life. This helped The Lego Movie gain even more popularity as many people found the adverts to be heart-warming and amusing.