LEGO

The Lego Movie (2014) was the rare branded-content experiment that became a genuinely great film, but the follow-ups — Lego Batman, Ninjago, and especially 2019's The Lego Movie 2 — cooled off at the box office, and Warner Animation Group has been slow to deliver the long-rumored threequel with Phil Lord and Christopher Miller attached. What's actually driven the brand's cultural footprint since then isn't film at all: LEGO Fortnite, the survival-building mode Epic launched inside Fortnite in late 2023, turned into one of the biggest crossovers in gaming, and LEGO Masters has become a reliable unscripted hit for Fox and Amazon.

Our take: LEGO's real competitive advantage right now is treating the brick as a platform rather than protecting it as a franchise — licensing it into Fortnite, Minecraft-style building games, and anyone else's IP sandbox has done more for relevance with kids than another theatrical sequel would. That's a sharper strategic read than most legacy toy companies have managed against Roblox and Fortnite eating into physical play time.

Keep an eye on whether a Lego Movie 3 actually materializes versus getting perpetually delayed in favor of more Fortnite-style tie-ins — if LEGO Horizon Adventures and LEGO Fortnite keep outperforming the film division's output, don't be surprised if theatrical slides further down the priority list.