jhuyser

Project X: A Canceled LEGO TV Show and Potentially Theme

Recommended Posts

While I posted this on another forum I lurk around, I thought after the reaction to some of this stuff some you might take interest in this also. The following information is presented in order of the show's development.:

Work on Project X presumably began sometime in 2001 with Dave Edwards and Fred Gambino:

Quote
I was approached by Dave Edwards through my agent Alison Eldred in 2001. He was the creator of the project. We worked for about a year and half. To begin with it was just Dave and myself but as things progressed he took on an assistant amongst others. I visited Lego HQ in Denmark. There was another guy directly employed by lego but i can’t recall his name now.

Presumably, the LEGO person was Michael Carrington of which I, in fact, found out about this on his site: http://michaelcarrington.tv/

Quote
Head of TV & New Media at LEGO Media

December 1999 - December 2003 | Windsor, Berkshire, UK

Against a background of explosive growth in the interactive entertainment market, Michael Carrington was a founding member of LEGO Media, Film & TV. He helped devise and implement the content strategy. production pipeline, and international TV sales. Building upon the natural fit between LEGO play materials and media, he co-developed and Executive produced animated television series, LITTLE ROBOTS, and pilot special, PROJECT X; laying the foundation for LEGO's success in the content space.

The show was designed to have tie in sets, though I have ran into nothing stating how far they got if anywhere.

Quote
Fred Gambino: Yes, the plan from the start was to merchandise the characters and vehicle
 

and would have been centered around a story that would have been somewhere in between Tron and ReBoot:

Quote
Fred Gambino: Basically a sort of Reboot meet Tron with digitised teenage kids surfing a future internet battling a virus.

https://variety.com/2002/digital/features/capers-mask-fits-lego-1117865293/

Quote
Lego is developing with Milestone Prods. and Mainframe Entertainment a combination live-action/CGI-animated series called “Project X,” about five children who become digitized and travel 200 years into the future through cyberspace.
 

Also for art not made by the people who did the soon to be explained pilot here’s some art of Fred Gambino's:

Quote

 

Now to the pilot, it was being made at Mainframe and what I’ve heard about its length has varied from a couple minutes to 10. Heck peoples memories even differed, for instance, take how Kevin Gambles memory (Understandably) changed:

 

Quote
His site: (http://www.crypticent.com/complete_resume/): Produced ten minute live-action / computer graphics animation promo / pilot episode.

 

Quote
Kevin Gamble: We worked directly with an exec from Lego and a creator they had hired to do a short test piece (I think it was 3 minutes?)


Also, this costume designers site has yet another runtime:http://www.ffionelinor.co.uk/:

Quote
PROJECT X (2002)
6 min pilot
Agenda TV
Dir: Renee Rye
Prod: Dave Edwards


As for the live action it would have been used when the kids were in our world:

Quote
Kevin: The animated kids stuff was entirely CG, once they went inside the world, it was 100% animated

With a transformation bit to bridge stuff:

Quote
Kevin: We built a live action set where the kids were digitized, and made costumes that matched the CG models, then did some visual effects for the transformation sequence. From there, it was entirely animated.


For 3D imagery from the pilot we have a couple of images:

Quote
res_projx_kids2.jpg


projectx_image.jpg

 

 
 


And some hoverboard stuff found here: https://www.behance.net/gallery/646993/Vehicle-Design

Quote
7c3e83646993.562584b81f5e2.jpg


29d6fb646993.56258455b57b8.jpg
 

b69757646993.562584b9e5e07.jpg

9e85c8646993.562583c951194.jpg

 


After the pilot was made LEGO took it to the market, but it, unfortunately, didn’t have enough traction to go further:

Quote
Kevin: and took it to market, unfortunately, it didn’t gain the traction needed to pull the pin on a series deal, so it was never produced


After this, the show was canned until around 2008 when Dave Edwards somehow began working on this without LEGO, not entirely sure what went down there but noting that Little Robots TV show went on after LEGO sold Create TV & Film (Which kept rights to the show) to Vanessa Chapman it doesn’t surprise me

Other notes:
Kevin's site called it Project X: Cybernet Surfers, though I’ve not seen it called that elsewhere

And this page used to have a video that got removed: http://web.archive.org/web/20080925145622/http://www.tinopolis.com:80/Animation/ProjectX/?pid=37&id=61

Blog post with raw messages: https://thebrickome.wordpress.com/2019/01/21/raw-project-x-emails/

Also a shout out thanks to jamesster and Professor Brickkeeper for help at some points

Edited by jhuyser

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Wonder if this show had anything to do with the naming conventions of the LEGOLand Roller Coaster by the same name?

I also wonder if this show intended to run off of Galidor's tail, if, well, Galidor succeeded.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
19 minutes ago, PenPlays said:

Wonder if this show had anything to do with the naming conventions of the LEGOLand Roller Coaster by the same name?

I also wonder if this show intended to run off of Galidor's tail, if, well, Galidor succeeded.

I'd certainly state it was similar to Galidor and a product from the same time. Create TV & Film, that was LEGO's TV division back in the day before being sold off, often kept away from having an actual LEGO feel with things like Little Robots (Of which in fact it was Create/LEGO behind the TV show, despite common fiction it was a licensed theme) and even the first 3 Bionicle movies. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    No registered users viewing this page.