Pixar Animator Wins Lego 'Wall-E' Contest

After winning, Angus MacLane, directing animator for the Pixar classic, will see his toy robot hit the stores on Sept. 21.

A version of this story first appeared in the Sept. 4 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.

Last year, Wall-E directing animator Angus MacLane created a model of the robot made with Lego pieces and put it on the Lego Ideas contest website, where it garnered the 10,000 votes needed for official consideration by the company (Wall-E director Andrew Stanton's Twitter support didn't hurt).

Now, seven years after Pixar released the movie, MacLane's Lego version goes on sale Sept. 21. "The goggles were the toughest to get right," says MacLane, currently at work on Finding Dory. "For years, I couldn't solve it. Then I saw car fender elements from another set. Doing this was similar to making a movie — you throw up an idea and just keep iterating on it."