Animal Logic · Village Roadshow Pictures · The Lego Group · 101 min
Box office
$469.2M worldwide on a $60M budget
Honors
British Academy Film Awards — 1 winNational Board of Review — 1 winAnnie Awards — 1 nominationCritics' Choice Movie Award — 1 winAll 3 wins · 2 nominations on record
British Academy Film Awards: BAFTA's Children & Young People Award - Feature Film
National Board of Review: National Board of Review: Top Ten Films
Critics' Choice Movie Award: Best Animated Feature
Scholarship
Named in the title of 14 peer-reviewed works
Examples
The LEGO Movie — University of Texas Press eBooks, 2020
The Lego Movie, 2022
The LEGO Movie as Savvy Cinema — University of Texas Press eBooks, 2020
Sources: Wikidata · OpenAlex · Library of Congress. The record of the motion picture, not an assessment of this cell.
FILM NOTES
The Lego Movie arrived from Warner Bros. in February 2014, an original production built around licensed bricks rather than a pre-sold story, which made its success all the more notable. Directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, it earned praise for its visual wit and self-aware humor, becoming a rare example of a toy-based film treated as genuine cinema rather than mere merchandise, and it remains a touchstone for animation of that decade.
This cell carries Vitruvius, the blind wizard-mentor whose prophecy sets the plot in motion and who guides the everyman hero Emmet through the story's central mythology. Collectors seek him out because he anchors the film's comedic tone while also supplying its emotional and narrative backbone, a rare balance in an animated ensemble built mostly for laughs. A single character reel like this one isolates that presence on its own, offering a compact record of a figure whose brief screen time carries outsized weight in the story's structure.
Authentication Findings8 checks
Consistent with a 35mm theatrical release print of The Lego Movie (2014).
Gauge
35mm, four perforations per frame on both edges; the strip holds three frames.
Perforations
Four per frame on each edge; spacing appears even and the punched holes appear cleanly cut with no visible tearing.
Soundtrack
A variable-area optical track is visible running along one edge beside the picture area, with what appears to be a Dolby Digital data-block strip in the inter-perforation zone on the same edge.
Edge print
Edge print reads reversed, indicating emulsion-up orientation; characters visible include what appears to be '2 3 8 C S E 2' and '0 5 1 1 8' though exact sequence is partially obscured.
Base & colour
Base shows a cyan-blue tint consistent with a colour print stock; dye image appears neutral with no visible red shift or fading.
Projection history
No visible scratches, splice marks, or cue marks seen in this capture.
Picture
Positive colour image; all three frames appear to be consecutive frames from a single continuous shot and the animated imagery is consistent with The Lego Movie (2014).
Era check
The combination of cyan-base colour print stock, variable-area optical track, and Dolby Digital data blocks between perforations is consistent with a theatrical release print from the 2010s.
Read from the original intake capture shown below. Observations only — film is authenticated, not graded.
This original motion picture film element has been examined and authenticated by Crown Grading in partnership with National Film Vault, and encapsulated for archival preservation.
Why so little survivesRelease prints were leased to theaters, not sold. When the run ended they went back to the distributor to be destroyed, and most were. What collectors hold today came from the prints that escaped that order, and no new 35mm prints of these films are being struck.
CROWN SERIAL 000063912
Original Film CaptureAs received
Photographed on the light panel at intake, before encapsulation — tap to open full size
Tap to enlarge
