Still delirious from the delightfully bat-shit performance of The Lego Movie’s “Everything Is Awesome” at Sunday’s Oscar ceremony? Well, if you’re from Wisconsin, this shouldn’t help: as reported by pretty much every media outlet on planet Earth yesterday, the director for the inevitable Lego Movie sequel has been named, and it’s none other than former Milwaukeean Rob Schrab. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller—co-directors and co-writers for the original 2014 film—are writing the sequel. It will be Schrab’s first feature-film directing credit. Awesome!
“We are so excited to collaborate with Rob,” Lord and Miller tell Variety. “He is a comedy genius, a visual savant, and we have been stalking him for years. No one works harder than Rob, and his aesthetic, combined with his sense of humor, bring a strong, unique, thoughtful, and passionately nerdy voice to this project. People who know him are slapping their foreheads today and saying, ‘Of course!’”
Schrab cut his artistic teeth in Milwaukee throughout the ’90s, attending MIAD, creating the cult comic book Scud: The Disposable Assassin, filming a live-action short called Robot Bastard, and performing alongside Community creator Dan Harmon in the seminal comedy troupe The Dead Alewives. (Cue that Dungeons & Dragons sketch.) He would go on to direct episodes of shows like The Sarah Silverman Program, Community, Parks And Recreation (R.I.P.), and The Mindy Project, as well as write the script for the 2006 animated feature Monster House. Oh, and he created the criminally axed Heat Vision And Jack pilot for Fox, which still rules to this day.
More important, Schrab is originally from Mayville, Wisconsin, birthplace of early-1900s-era baseball player Bert Husting, the annual “Audubon Days” festival, and Milwaukee Record co-creator/editor Matt Wild. The Lego Movie sequel is expected to hit theaters May 26, 2017.