How was it legal for Batman, Chewbacca, and Wonder Woman to be in the LEGO movie?

Did anybody else marvel at the legal gymnastics that must have occurred for the LEGO movie to make it out into the world?

Maybe it is a sad testament to our times that watching a movie designed to mimic a child’s imagination raises intellectual property issues.

In a great interview from Jami Philbrick at I am Rebel (IAR), directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller discuss the “legal wrangling” that allowed various characters to appear:

Miller: We tried to use as many different aspects of the Lego world as possible and behind the scenes it was a total legal challenge. However, creatively it was super fun because it was something you could only do in a Lego movie.

So when you did choose certain licensed properties to use in the film, did you then have to ask the Warner Bros. legal department if you could use them or not?

Miller: We would write them into the script and pretend we had the rights, and then just keep pushing until we didn’t. In almost all cases we ended up getting everything we wanted to get in there. We wanted the movie to feel like it was written by an eight-year old and it was from the mind of a child. Like the way a lot of kids, my son included, when they’re building Legos they put Batman, Chewbacca and a cowboy all in the same spaceship together. It seemed like it was really fun.

Read more about Wonder Woman’s diminished role and the negotiations for the Star Wars characters.

Image courtesy Ian Muttoo.