Ninjago: The New Timeline

**Ninjago: The New Timeline** is an animated LEGO-film featuring the LEGO Ninjago characters. It is directed, written, filmed and edited by DCS Studios. It is the first movie as well as the first installment of DCS Studios' LEGO Ninjago Series and his primary project. The film stars DCS Studios, Dragon Summoner Productions, Zahid Ghafoor. The film follows the ninja as they unite to become protectors of Ninjago, as the Time Twins from the future attempt to destroy their timeline.

In early January 2017, DCS Studios announced that he was in the works of making a full-length Ninjago movie with a more serious tone and a more action-packed story than the Lego Ninjago Movie. During that time, the original title for the movie was going to be called, "The Essence of Time". He later changed the title to "Ninjago: Temporal", as a nod to "The Temporal Whip" sung by the FOLD. On November 10, 2017, he confirmed that the title was officially going to be called "Ninjago: The New Timeline" and held a casting call for voice actors that day. Filming began on December 20th 2017, but schedule conflicts pushed back his original air date, and eventually, the film was put on hold.

## Production

### Casting

On November 10, 2017, the first Casting Call was uploaded to Ninjago the New Timeline. Due to his channel's unpopularity on youtube, however, he was only able to get three people for their desired roles.

* Casting Call 1: "Dragon Summoner Productions", "Titanium Turtle" and "Luna Lover 101 Adventures Adventures" (Now going by the name; "Midnight D Gacha") auditioned for their desired roles. Dragon auditioned for Kai, Titanium Turtle auditioned for Jay, and MDG auditioned for Nya, Joy, and Maya. Dragon got cast as Kai and the Act 1 script was sent to him a few weeks afterward. Titanium Turtle was originally cast as Jay, but after he sent him the Act 1 script, he never responded. Because of this, and his apparent lack of interest in the film, he was dropped from the role. MDG was orignally cast as Joy, Nya, and Maya, but insisted that listen to her via Discord since it was her easiest way of communication. Devin repeated twice that he did not have Discord, nor did he have any intention to have Discord.
* Casting Call 2: "Zahid Ghafoor" Auditioned for Cole, Ben Delmar, and Commander Blunk and was cast as all three. To this day he has been the best contributor to the project along with Dragon Summoner Productions despite the conflicts.
* Casting Call 3: On June 20, MDG told Devin via the Youtube comment section that she had to dropout of her roles as Nya, Joy, and Maya because she had speaking issues and did not consider herself to be a good actress. Because of this, Devin dropped her from her rolls and issued a new casting call but with a warning. The warning was that if anyone was auditioning, they have to be truthful and tell Devin if they have speaking issues and if they lie about it, they will be dropped from whatever role they auditioned for.
* Final Casting Call:

### Filming

Filming for Ninjago The New Timeline began in late December 2017. While filming the prologue, Devin had changed the beginning in an effort to use less special effects as much as possible, since he only had Openshot Video Editor, instead of Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effects. After editing the prologue, Openshot Video Editor crashed for unknown reasons, so filming was delayed for several weeks. Sometime later, his dad bought Adobe Premiere Pro and he continued editing his new version of the prologue. But after exporting, the frame was not his desired size. He deleted the new version of the prologue and went back to filming by the script. However, due to scheduling conflicts and his desire to take a break, Devin decided to put filming on hold and thus putting the film on hold until he could find enough time to resume his project.

### Script Writing

The script for Act 1 was written several weeks before the first casting call. Several revisions had gone through the script. After several revisions, Devin ultimately decided to have the script carry loose elements from "*Star Trek (2009)".*

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### Major Delay

After beginning to refilm the prologue with the correct ratio, scheduling conflicts began to rob Devin of his time to continue on with the project. Eventually, he decided to put the film on hold in early December, 2018 and hasn't been working on the project since.

## Sequels

Devin Simpson has plans to make at least two sequels after Ninjago: The New Timeline. The second movie was going to be about Lord Garmadon and the Overlord, while the third movie's plot is still unknown. He decided to make a series following the first movie. The movie was going to be the start of a TV series with the two movie sequels added in as well.

## References

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