Keanu Reeves is reportedly set to join the cast of a new LEGO movie.
New LEGO Film
The John Wick star, 61, has been tipped to re-team with his Toy Story 4 director Josh Cooley to work on a new film based around the toy franchise, which will be a live-action hybrid, according to Deadline.
The new film will be directed by Cooley and will feature a mixture of live-action filming and animation with the project being created around Reeves’ character.
The outlet reports there have been weeks of talks with Keanu Reeves, and he recently gave the “thumbs up to star in the film.”
The news comes seven years after Reeves voiced the character of Duke Caboom in Cooley’s 2019 animated movie Toy Story 4, which won an Oscar for Best Animated Feature and grossed more than one billion dollars at the box office worldwide.
Other LEGO Films
The LEGO franchise kicked off with The LEGO Movie in 2014 and was followed by a sequel, The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part, in 2019. Two spin-off films followed: The LEGO Batman Movie and The LEGO Ninjago Movie, which were both released in 2017.
Reeves in Hidari
The new LEGO movie is not the only animated film Keanu Reeves is working on. He’s also signed up to lend his voice to the Japanese samurai epic Hidari.
The actor will voice the title character in the stop-motion action film from director Masashi Kawamura. Hidari is an expansion of Kawamura’s 2023 proof-of-concept viral series of the same name, which has amassed nearly five million views on YouTube. Kawamura has also penned the screenplay.
The story is loosely inspired by the legend of Jingoro Hidari, a near-mythic master carpenter from Japan’s Edo period, and follows the artisan as he loses his father figure, his fiancée and his right arm to a betrayal tied to the secret reconstruction of Edo Castle. Hidari then channels his own grief into vengeance, wielding a series of mechanical prosthetic arms of his own design alongside his loyal animated wooden companion, the Sleeping Cat.
Excitement for the Film
Keanu Reeves said in a statement, “I’m thrilled by the vision behind Hidari. “From the proof of concept to the developed script, the team has created something truly extraordinary. It has all the makings of an exceptional film – one I’m excited to see and eager to be part of. I believe this project has the potential to bring something very special to audiences worldwide.”