The difference is that the Lego movie was dreamed up by someone outside Lego (Dan Lin) who then got the Lego company on board, not an exec at Lego deciding that

The difference is that the Lego movie was dreamed up by someone outside Lego (Dan Lin) who then got the Lego company on board, not an exec at Lego deciding that they "need to capture the film adjacency in 2014."