‘The Lego Movie’ Producer Details His Fight With Warner Bros. to Keep Live-Action Scenes With Will Ferrell

thewrap.com:

very close to having his entire performance in “The Lego Movie” — along with all live-action scenes — end up on the cutting room floor, the film’s producer, Dan Lin, said Saturday at PGA’s Produced By Conference.Lin recalled the uphill battle that went into the building blocks of the hybrid animated and live-action movie, revealing that Warner Bros.

initially wanted to cut the latter chunk of the film that included scenes featuring Ferrell.During a conversation with Chris Miller, who penned the screenplay for the 2014 hit along with writing-producing partner Phil Lord, Lin said the budget demands from the studio forced him to treat the family comedy as an “indie movie.” The Rideback Ranch founder even had to pre-sell the basement set, which featured the human characters, to Legoland as an exhibit to partially fund the movie.

The set is where it’s revealed that Ferrell’s character (known as “The Man Upstairs”) and his son Finn are playing out the events in real life that are going on in the Lego universe.

The live-action sequence is also a pivotal part of the film, adding a layer of depth in which Ferrell’s character realizes that the villainous Lego named Business is based on him.“When we finally put [the movie] up for a test audience, real people, it tested very well, and the movie was working,” Lin said. “And I got a call from the head of the studio [Kevin Tsujihara at the time] … but he said, ‘Dan, I have good news for you’ and I said, ‘Wow, what’s the good news?’ And he said, ‘You guys made such a good movie.