Last night, DC Entertainment premiered Lego Batman The Movie: DC Superheroes Unite, an animated movie based on the video game Lego Batman 2 that came out last year.
The premiere, held at the Paley Center for Media in New York City, also included a panel featuring the director/producer of the game and movie Jon Burton, the game and movie’s director of photography Jeremy Pardon and voice actors Troy Baker (Batman), Travis Willingham (Superman) and Clancy Brown (Lex Luthor, returning to a role he had done most famously on Superman: The Animated Series as well as Justice League Unlimited).
Being the first movie for the production team, after many years of producing various licensed property games off of Lego toy lines such as Star Wars, Pirates of The Caribbean and Harry Potter, the idea behind the project actually started with the movie as Burton explains; “We went the traditional route of developing the movie first. I wrote out the storyline and we set up a treatment on that, then and we hired David Goodman whom is an executive producer on The Family Guy and he wrote a funny script. So we approached it as a film and then we tried to figure out how we’d turn this into a video game.”
Stylistically, the film takes its cues from the two Tim Burton directed films, which isn’t an accident as Burton, no relation, is a big fan of the film. “When I was growing up, I was heavily influenced by the Burton films, and that shows up in the movie as well.” Also noted is that Danny Elfman’s iconic theme, as well as John Williams’ legendary Superman: The Movie theme are paid homage to in the film.
Release date for the movie is slated for May 21 as it hits stores in Blu Ray and DVD formats, as well as streaming and downloading stores.
Director Jon Burton and Director of Photography Jeremy Pardon
Superman, Travis Willingham and Batman, Troy Baker
Posted by Steve J. Rogers
