Pharrell Williams Debuts Trailer for His Lego Animated Biopic ‘Piece by Piece’ — and Teases Two New Tracks

“You know what what would be cool is if we told my story with Lego pieces,” Lego Pharrell tells the similarly-bricked director Morgan Neville (the Oscar-winning documentarian behind “20 Feet From Stardom”), who chuckles politely and asks, “Seriously?” Pharrell replies: “Just be open.”

The colorfully and creatively reimagined scene is pretty close to how the conversation played out nearly five years ago, Neville says, as he and Williams sign on to a Zoom chat to discuss how this innovative project came together. And the result is unlike anything he’s ever done — or seen — before.

“What we made is not like any other movie. I don’t know what a comp for it would be,” he explains of the psychedelic-looking visuals that seem to be infused with joy as much as they are music. “People can try and label it. It’s just its own film. It’s mind-blowing, in a way, the freedom that we were able to put together in the film, but that only works if you’re channeling your subject.”As the clip illustrates, Williams has always viewed art in unconventional ways. “I loved music. It was mesmerizing to me,” he narrates over a scene from his young life. ” I would see beautiful hues of light cascading. I just thought that’s what all Black kids did — they stared into the speaker like ‘Whoa.'” So it shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise that he came up with the idea to use Lego to illustrate his journey. However, he’d been resistant to the idea of doing a documentary or biopic when his agent first brought him the prospect seven or eight years ago.