How J.K. Rowling Had A Hand In THE LEGO BATMAN MOVIE

More than any other franchise in history, the LEGO movies seem like they can pretty much do whatever they want with almost any character. Just take a look at the likes of their use of Star Wars, the Justice League, and even Harry Potter, among countless others. While they’re never disrespectful of these properties, they’re more than happy to poke fun at them in a big way. 

The same can definitely be said of The LEGO Batman Movie, which has ironically turned out to be one of the better reviewed Batman films in existence, if you can believe that. That’s right. Better than pretty much every other incarnation, with the exception of Nolan’s The Dark Knight. Though while it is a Batman movie, it was sure to spread the love to other properties.

If you have yet to see The LEGO Batman Movie, and don’t want to be spoiled by some specific character involvements, I recommend not reading ahead.

SPOILER ALERT!

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In the film, one of the baddies at work is none other than He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named himself, Lord Voldemort. Speaking with LEGO Batman Movie director Chris McKay, EW asked about whether or not Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling had a hand in Voldemort’s involvement. Here’s what McKay had to say:

“Yeah. We used Dumbledore in The LEGO Movie as a quick one-off joke, but Voldemort obviously plays a bigger role in this movie, and J.K. Rowling obviously cares very deeply about these characters, so we absolutely had to run stuff by her. But honestly, there were no notes. The only thing that she gave us was, like, spell suggestions and things like that that Voldemort should say. It was all really positive and helpful. It was never ‘I’m uncomfortable with that.’ I can’t say enough good things about working with her.”

With Voldemort making an appearance, it had to cross someone’s mind that the man to voice him could be none other than Ralph Fiennes himself, who voices Alfred in the movie. But those who were hoping for a ridiculous piece of fourth wall breakage there will walk away disappointed.

“At one point I approached the studio and asked if I could get Ralph to do both parts. But unless you’re going to do a scene where Alfred and Voldemort confront each other, I didn’t want something to feel like a missed opportunity. [Laughs.] I do remember when I was pitching him the movie, I said, “Yeah, then all of these bad guys are going to be unleashed like King Kong and Sauron and Voldemort—” And then I stopped for a second because I realized who I was talking to.”

So why didn’t they move forward with Fiennes’ voice for Voldy? In an interview our very own Edward Douglas, McKay revealed why.

“That’s a good question, because I originally said, ‘Can we get him to do both?’ It’s one of those things where I had so many characters and so many things going on, I was always really afraid of us not being able to capitalize on some of these things, because I would want Alfred and Voldemort to have a scene together. I would want to do something with that, or I was afraid that if we did do something like that it would just end up getting cut, because for time reasons, because there’s only so much stuff we can animate. I pitched it to the studio, but I think they were just sort of like, ‘Look, there’s so many characters, so many stories, you’re never going to be able to fit that thing in.’ Yeah, it was one of those things that we couldn’t do, unfortunately. “

Do you think not having Fiennes voicing Voldemort was a missed opportunity? Let us know your thoughts down below!



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SOURCE: EW

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