Pharrell Williams has always done things differently in his music and his fashion, so why would his movie be different?
The singer-producer-designer is doing a biopic about his life. Focus Features just released the trailer for it. But it’s not your average musician biopic of the kind “Walk Hard” parodied. No, Williams is telling his life story through Legos. The movie is called “Piece by Piece,” but a more descriptive title would be “The Lego Pharrell Movie.”
The film follows Williams’ artistic journey, from growing up in Virginia Beach to the peak of the music industry, but tells it in an unconventional way, with impressionistic animation that combines psychedelia and Legos. The film is directed by Oscar, Emmy, and Grammy-winning documentary filmmaker Morgan Neville (“20 Feet from Stardom,” “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”) in his feature debut.
Williams and Neville hope the film resonates not just with fans of Williams’ music, but anyone seeking inspiration. “We wanted it to be a medium for anyone that just wanted to hear a good, aspirational, inspiring story told vividly, in a way that felt like it could apply to them personally,” Williams said in an interview with Variety introducing the trailer. “That they’d realize that at seven years old or 77 years old, they could wake up tomorrow and go tell their story, piece by piece.”
The voice cast includes Williams’ collaborators Gwen Stefani, Kendrick Lamar, Timbaland, Justin Timberlake, Busta Rhymes, Jay-Z, and Snoop Dogg, voicing Lego versions of themselves. The film will also feature two new songs from Williams.
Williams rose to prominence as one-half of the influential hip-hop production duo the Neptunes (with Chad Hugo) in the early 2000s, and then stepped out as a solo artist, performing on hit songs like “Blurred Lines” with Robin Thicke and T.I., “Get Lucky” with Daft Punk, and his own “Happy.” He founded the clothing company Billionaire Boys Club, and since 2023, he has been the men’s creative director of Louis Vuitton. He has won 13 Grammys and been nominated for two Academy Awards, Best Original Song in 2014 for “Happy” from “Despicable Me 2” and Best Picture in 2017 for producing “Hidden Figures.”
“Piece by Piece” will be released in theaters on October 11.
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