While I wouldn’t entirely shut out the possibility of there being a BIONICLE movie, I do not believe that LEGO would make the mistake of cutting a theme off short only to reboot it two or three years down the line.
It is clear that if LEGO were to release a G3, previous fans would have serious trust issues and some wouldn’t even bother with it at all anymore because of how badly they were let down with G2.
It just seems like a foolish business decision to cut everything short to then dump money and resources into a Constraction movie when they could be putting it into a better known System theme.
This is also why we are getting a Ninjago movie and not, say, a Friends theme. They’d rather capitalize on a theme they know has a much wider following rather than taking a gamble on a rather obscure (in the grand scope of things) theme.
In the end, I won’t entirely discount the possibility, but I find the possibility quite low.
Okay, I am actually going to take the time to form a rebuttal for each one of these points.
Probably because it’s another popular LEGO theme that they felt like referencing. Or it’s a parody of “The Bionic Man”, and the title is “The Bionicle Man”.
No it doesn’t. There are no metrics to measure how well BIONICLE sold, and the only bit of confirmation we have is LEGO claiming on twitter that it “sold well”, directly denying the possibility of the line’s failure due to poor sales. Interpret that as a lie all you want, it’s the only fact we have.
None of this is logically sound. If LEGO wanted to make a movie based on BIONICLE during G2’s run, why wouldn’t they promote it as soon as it returned in the first place? The Ninjago Movie was never any secret. We’ve been getting info on that since 2013. If a BIONICLE movie was already in development, we would have heard about it in 2014 when BIONICLE’s return was announced.
And if such development was taking place in the middle of G2’s run, it’s safe to say that those dreams are dead alongside G2. BIONICLE’s cancellation was decided upon in the middle of 2015, right after BIONICLE’s official return, so when are you suggesting is the “middle of G2”? Did they decide to make the movie after they decided BIONICLE was not going to work? Probably not, because that makes no sense. And if they wanted to intentionally FAIL to sell their own line to eventually make a movie for it (which sounds very counterproductive), why was this practice not done with Ninjago? Why didn’t Ninjago fail before the movie was announced? Because that makes no sense. You don’t make movies for failures. You make movies for things that succeed to win the mass’s love, as LEGO has, proven with the LEGO movie; as Ninjago has consistently done for the past six years without any “intentional failure”.
Actually, that’s what you do to promote your product. You host contests to appeal to the masses with the opportunity to win free stuff. You create TV Shows based on toys to sell them. You hire other companies that appeal to different audiences to promote your stuff so you can spread the word. These points actually make a basis for proving that LEGO WANTED BIONICLE TO SUCCEED more than anything.
No. You don’t remove a product from the public eye to sell it. You PUSH it forward at every chance you get. LEGO did so by bringing back BIONICLE in the first place. They wanted to make an attempt at the concept of an original, story-driven, constraction theme. We KNOW this because they DID it. Obviously, something wasn’t working, and BIONICLE had to be cancelled.
Maybe it WAS because it did not sell well enough for LEGO. This makes sense, because that’s what companies do. They discontinue products that do not sell. Or maybe it’s because LEGO needed to pump more of their resources into their more successful themes, and this meant that BIONICLE had to be sacrificed in the process. This makes sense because BIONICLE G2 was newer than the bigger themes such as City, or Ninjago, and with Ninjago now getting a movie, they have bigger shoes to fill. People are going to eat that stuff up.
Nothing you’ve suggested as the reason for BIONICLE’s cancellation makes sense.
I won’t deny the idea that LEGO may want to bring BIONICLE back sometime in the future with a movie to help promote it, for all we know we might be in for a treat in a few years, but the suggestion that the movie’s development is the reason why BIONICLE failed? Sorry, but no, I have an extremely hard time believing that’s how it works.
I would like to hope that there’s a Bionicle movie coming, and that maybe G2’s cancellation had something to do with it interfering, but… no. Every part of me wants to rationalize it in that way, but that’s all hopes that throwing ideas like this one around are going to fan like crazy only to make the inevitable disappointment more crushing. I get it, I miss Bionicle too, but we’ve got Brickonicle to keep the creative minds churning for the time being. I’d prefer if the crystal balls and speculations were left at bay.
A friend of mine once met one of the Bionicle team members at an event and he gained a lot of useful information from the discussion on the topics of both Bionicle endings. He’s kept contact with said person and has shared the information with me a couple times.
So, G1. It’s true the sales and popularity had decreased by 2010, but the final nail was that the Bionicle team got a change in management internally. This new management wanted to create their own fresh theme instead of continuing Bionicle to leave their own mark to Lego, and that mark was Hero Factory.
G2, this had everything to do with marketing. The expectations and projections on G2’s success were so ridiculously high that it wouldn’t be able to meet them. The sales expectations were roughly 3 times that of G1’s and they were hoping old fans would be the ones carrying the theme to success. At a time when story-driven themes like Ninjago, Chima, Elves and others were thriving, Bionicle had lost its original foothold. When a constraction theme lives and dies by its story, they should’ve marketed G2 a ton, but they didn’t put enough into that.
If that’s true I want to go to Denmark and find the person who though of this would happen and say, “YOU EXPECTED BIONICLE TO SELL 3 TIMES AS MUCH WITHOUT ANY PROPER ADVERTISING!” SLAP “WHAT WERE YOU THINKING!!!”
Ok everyone, let’s think about what would make more sense, Solid Gold Masks that the kids will crave, or creating a 13 episode cartoon that will get the kids buying our sets…
While a THE LEGO BIONICLE MOVIE could be a good idea that like how Lloyd and Batman appear in the first LEGO Movie, maybe Tahu and Takanuva might be in The LEGO Movie 2 become in the fact if LEGO wants to make a BIONICLE movie, movie first they need put 2 of their most popular characters in the sequel of their first ever big movie, since it’s a Easter Egg for a movie that I didn’t see yet, but it’s kind a better than my LEGO Spider-Man Movie idea.
I mean, that doesn’t mean it can’t be brought back at some point. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.
Anyway, the way I was looking at it, it’s a nice little easter egg, and gives fans something to watch out for during the lego movies. Like the Stan Lee cameos in marvel. You know they’ll be there, and you try to see if you can catch it.
Personally I don’t see why Lego would be interested in making a Lego Bionicle movie. Bonkle G2 didn’t do that well, and unlike Batman or Ninjago was not popular enough to gain a movie.
Basically, my thoughts on this is what eljay said: