Jason Segel (The Muppets) and Drew Pearce (Iron Man 3) have been tapped by Warner Bros. to write and direct a brand new LEGO spinoff. Titled The Billion Brick Race, this is now the fourth movie on the studio’s slate linked to last year’s uber-successful The LEGO Movie. Ninjago will arrive next year, The LEGO Batman Movie is set for 2017 and The LEGO Movie 2 will follow in 2019. No release date has been announced for the Segel-Pearce spinoff as yet, but it’s highly likely to land sometime after the first LEGO sequel.
The Billion Brick Race will mark both Segel and Pearce’s first proper foray into feature directing. Easing them into the process are The LEGO Movie creative hub Phil Lord, Chris Miller, Dan Lin and Roy Lee, who are all on board to produce. The film is based on an original idea by Pearce that “excited the studio.” That aside though, there’s no further word on the story as “plot details are being kept hidden deep in Bricksburg.”
Enlisting Segel and Pearce for such a lucrative property (The LEGO Movie brought in $469 million worldwide) is a masterstroke. The former has a plentiful resume dotted with a number of high-profile studio writing gigs; Forgetting Sarah Marshall, The Five-Year Engagement and Sex Tape to name but three. As for Pearce, his big screen dalliances have seen the likes of Iron Man 3, Mission Impossible – Rogue Nation and the upcoming Ghostbusters spinoff #2 emerge from his ballpoint. Put those two together and we could be looking at another winning animated caper with The Billion Brick Race.
