When making the LEGO Movie, producer Dan Lin and his team went to great lengths to include every LEGO figure they could. That means of course, the lovable LEGO iteration of Batman, who shows up. The team went to DC and Warner Bros. and asking for their permission to do their take on the Caped Crusader in tiny miniature form who is by all rights “a bit of a jerk”. That means they also went to Christopher Nolan as well, asking for his blessing to use the character, because he had essentially redefined the character for the movie going audience in the last decade.
We approached both Warners and Christopher Nolan….And myself, Chris Miller and Phil Lord, we pitched a different kind of Batman. We said, ‘You guys have your live-action Batman, we have what we called the LEGO Batman. A Batman that’s very self-aware. That is, you know, a bit of a jerk at times.’ As soon as they understood there are different universes, that worked out okay. But that was a big challenge going to all the different rightsholders, saying, ‘This is how we’re going to take your character and Lego-ize it.
That’s how Batman was able to be in the LEGO Movie and not detract from the new, grittier and based in reality Batman films. In October of this year, the LEGO Batman Movie was annouced by the LEGO co-director Christopher Miller. Details are scarce, but it seems the Dark Knight has a future in cinema in LEGO form as well as in live-action form.
Source: IGN