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okay actually. about the possibility of the new Ninjago movie being live action. you guys know I'm ride or die for animation, but considering it's for Universal, I'm okay with it being live action. they have a couple of banger animation studios under their wing (namely Laika and Dreamworks), but they also have Illumination.
If they were to make an animated Ninjago movie (which can't be a LEGO-movie because the rights to make LEGO movies goes back to Warner Bros in 2025), having it animated by Laika is a hard no, Dreamworks is unlikely (but not unthinkable, especially considering how the Hageman brothers have worked for Dreamworks before), but we'd most likely either get a Ninjago movie animated by illumination OR they could do what they did with their last animated film and just have it be a collaboration between some smaller production companies that hire some animators for just this one project (which is a gamble.)
I just. Unless they get Dreamworks to animate it, I'd prefer live action. I don't want to see Illumination Ninjago.
Besides, the Hageman brothers have been treating Ninjago like live action since day 1. They were originally just tasked with creating a handful of short films to go with LEGO's new fantasy concept. The team was told to just come up with something that looked cool, and to create a few tracks for a sound library they could mix and match to the visuals. Absolutely no one involved followed those instructions. Instead they wrote a motion picture (neatly divided into acts that could be cut into shorts), with a solid plot, worldbuilding, character arcs, and scored the whole thing scene by scene like you would a traditional movie. (not even Avatar the Last Airbender had that. they used a sound library for the majority of their episodes.) The animation, however, was nothing special. They couldn't do what other animated series could, with funky angles and fluid motions, so instead they had to rely on the writing to keep viewers engaged. Because of this, the visuals of early seasons Ninjago feel more live action than cartoony (or anime-esque, which is how I'd describe the more recent seasons).
So really, I won't mind a live action Ninjago movie. I'm looking forward to seeing what they come up with :D