PORTSMOUTH, Va. (WAVY) — Virginia Beach native Pharrell Williams now has an another upcoming film, a biopic — in Lego form.
Williams shared the first trailer for “Piece by Piece,” Thursday on social media. The movie is set to be released in theaters on October 11 and features everyone from Kendrick Lamar and Snoop Dogg to Gwen Stefani and Timbaland.
“You know what would be cool is if we told my story with Lego pieces,” Williams says in the trailer’s opening to a Lego-fied version of director Morgan Neville, who won an Oscar for the documentary “20 Feet From Stardom.”
It’s easy to be confused at first about the film, after news earlier this year of a separate movie in the works from Williams. The other film, still untitled, is about Virginia Beach during Williams’ childhood in the late 1970s. However, that will be a fictional story in musical form, not focusing on Williams.
Williams explained the differences in an interview with Variety:
“This film is about my life and how God is continuing to give me the pieces that put it together — piece by piece — and to have really amazing people along the journey in my constellation. To all the stars, musically, and all my teachers and everybody who has contributed to this constellation.
That project is about the neighborhood that I grew up in until I was, maybe, 10 and what that life was like. It takes place in 1977. I was obviously four years old, so it’s not about my life. It’s a fictional story told in that world, called Atlantis Apartments.
We actually show some of Atlantis in “Piece by Piece,” because that’s my real life. I was born in Mermaid City [a nickname for Norfolk, Virginia], and raised in Atlantis.”
Pharrell Williams in Variety
The trailer for “Piece by Piece” includes “Get Lucky” with Williams and Daft Punk, “Rump Shaker,” an early Williams-produced hit with 1992 Wreckx-n-Effect, “Rock Star” from Williams and N.E.R.D, “Drop It Like It’s Hot” with Williams and Snoop Dogg and, of course, Williams’ 2013 hit “Happy.”
Check out the trailer below: