The screenwriting pair of Dan Hernandez and Benji Samit have contributed to TV series like 1600 Penn, One Day at a Time, The Tick, Central Park, and Koala Man, plus movies such as Pokémon: Detective Pikachu and The Addams Family 2. Their latest big success was 2023’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, and now they’ve written the new Disney+ animated miniseries LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy for Lucasfilm. I had the wonderful opportunity to speak with them this week about how this project came about and their relationships with the LEGO and Star Wars franchises.
In the embedded YouTube video below you can watch my interview with Dan Hernandez and Benji Samit, and the transcribed version of the text is underneath that for your reading pleasure.
Watch Interview – "LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy" writers Dan Hernandez and Benji Samit:
Mike Celestino, Laughing Place: How did this project come about for you guys? Was this your original pitch or were you approached by Lucasfilm and LEGO?
Benji Samit: We’ve had a long relationship with Lucasfilm and LEGO now. We started working with them on that first [LEGO Star Wars] Holiday Special that they did. We came in for a day, did some punch-up jokes and things like that, and they saw how much we love– not just Star Wars– but LEGO [also]. I’m a massive LEGO nerd [with an] insane LEGO collection. LEGO and Star Wars are my two great loves, and I think they saw that, so then when they started talking about wanting to do something big for the 25th anniversary of LEGO Star Wars, they came to us. And we just started talking: ‘What can we do that felt bigger and a real celebration of LEGO Star Wars?’ So we started going down this path of, ‘Well, what if we really shake up the entire galaxy?’ We sort of viewed it as recreating the way kids and adults play with their Star Wars LEGO [sets], which is you don’t just take the pieces and act out the movies exactly as they happened. No, you take your bin of LEGO, you dump it on the floor, and you just start having fun– mixing and matching, and timelines become irrelevant, good guys are bad guys, bad guys are good guys, ships are different… whatever you want to do. We wanted to recreate that experience and celebrate that, and everyone was on board with that. And we were off to the races from there.
LP: Can you talk about the lessons you learned coming out of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, and working with such a big, pre-existing franchise? How did you bring that experience into LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy?
Dan Hernandez: I mean, we’re so proud of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem. I think it’s just a fantastic movie. Sometimes things turn out better than you could even hope, once you see the finished product, and that was definitely an example of that. But I think one of the things that we learned that was applicable to this project was, not everything that we did in Mutant Mayhem was the same as what had come before. There were some deviations in the origin of certain characters, the way that certain pieces of historical fact were presented in Mutant Mayhem are a little bit different than in the comics or on the show. And there were definitely conversations about, ‘Is this too much? Are we going too far? Are people not going to like this because it feels different than what they’re familiar with?’ What we ultimately discovered was that if it felt spiritually like the [original source material], that people would come along for the ride. And I think that we really applied that lesson very specifically to this special, because we weren’t doing the things that were the same. In fact, in many cases we very purposefully deviated from what someone that had been steeped in Star Wars lore for many years would understand or recognize. But at the end of the process, we said, ‘You know, as long as it feels like LEGO, as long as it feels like Star Wars… as long as it feels like LEGO Star Wars, I think people are gonna go along for this ride and actually be excited to see something that’s a little bit different than what they expected.
LP: I was just looking into the history of Jedi Bob as a character. How did you guys discover that? Is that something that you came in with pre-existing knowledge of or did that come to you through LEGO Star Wars research? And what other little Easter Eggs are you most proud of in this project?
Samit: [Jedi Bob] definitely came from my deep love of LEGO Star Wars, and being a longtime collector and fan of it. You know, I’ve been playing LEGO Star Wars since before there [were] even official licensed Star Wars LEGO sets– I was making Star Wars out of just generic LEGO [pieces]. So I’ve been well-aware of Jedi Bob as just a member of that ‘Adult Fan of LEGO’ AFOL community for years, and so when we started talking about this show, immediately I was like, ‘Well, obviously the Jedi Master in this should be Jedi Bob. And there was definitely a lot of, ‘Wait, who?’ from certain people involved in this, because it is a very deep cut. And once I explained the history and how much fans would flip out if we were to do this, people got excited and on board. Beyond that, we put all sorts of LEGO references in throughout– Sig’s last name Greebling is actually a George Lucas term from building the models of the ships [in the original Star Wars movies], but it’s now been adopted in the LEGO community [to mean] all the details on ships. Yesi Scala– Scala is an old LEGO line for girls from way back in the day.
Hernandez: Lug, Sigfig…
Samit: Yeah, there’s a ton of deep LEGO cuts that I put in just for fun, and it’s been exciting to see the LEGO geeks out there pick up on them and notice these little things.
Hernandez: And at the same time, I would say there’s an equal amount of Star Wars Easter Eggs. If you’re looking at any given scene in the show, there’s something surprising that’s going on somewhere that was given a lot of thought and consideration by us, by everyone at Lucasfilm and LEGO, and also our amazing director Chris Buckley and the team at Atomic Cartoons, who crushed it. Because we really wanted to go all-out. We really wanted to do things for everyone: the deepest, most serious, [well-]versed Star Wars fan to people like my kids who have never watched any Star Wars whatsoever. And it had to work equally for everyone. So I think that everybody really pulled together to put some pretty unexpected and fun stuff [in there] that I hope people will catch [across] hopefully multiple viewings.
LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy premieres this Friday, September 13th, exclusively via Disney+.