Lego’s regular forays into the infinite realms of pop culture are becoming more and more involved. Aside from the big-ticket licensing tie-ins – Minecraft, Star Wars, Pokémon, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, etc – there have also been high-profile collaborations with Pharrell Williams, Olivia Rodrigo, as well as various football and F1 stars.
Lego x Daft Punk
Now the brick builders have reached out and added another creative to their closet. French electro duo Daft Punk are the newest sign-ups to the world of Lego, promising a fresh take on Lego’s blend of ‘music, culture and creative experimentation’.
So what will Daft Punk bring to the party? After all, Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo officially disbanded their act back in 2021, having founded Daft Punk in 1993. The duo enjoyed a career that mixed highly performative anonymity, stunning live and video visuals, not to mention hit after hit after hit.
Daft Punk in action
Few modern artists – let alone those working in the realm of dance music – have shaped, projected and sustained such a well-curated image as Bangalter and de Homem-Christo. It’s therefore unsurprising to find that Daft Punk™ (note the trademark) is very much a going concern, with creative director Cédric Hervet overseeing a host of posthumous projects that includes remixes, reissues, soundtracks, and high-profile partnerships with the likes of Fortnite.
Daft Punk cameo alongside Pharrell Williams and Nile Rodgers in Piece by Piece (2024)
Lego is the latest brand to come knocking. The collaboration was made concrete by a film featuring Daft Punk’s tracks ‘Voyager’ and ‘Human After All’. It’s a pairing that has its origins in a couple of Lego-related events, starting with the duo’s minifig cameo in the Pharrell Williams 2024 brick-built biopic Piece by Piece, followed by an appearance on the Lego Ideas fan creation site, with Daft Punk Concert, a set suggested by super-fan Patrick Harboun and his son.
'Daft Punk Concert', the original Lego Ideas set proposal
That representation of the Daft Punk ‘pyramid’ stage set (from the 2007 Alive tour) will go into production next year, the first in what is hoped will be a series of related sets. It's only hinted at in today's launch film, which follows the Daft Punk robotic minifigures along a holographic red brick road through a neon-streaked landscape, leading to a concert venue that builds itself around them.
Wallpaper* spoke with Cédric Hervet about the scope and scale of the collaboration and what it means for the enduring power of the Daft Punk name.
Wallpaper*: What can the Lego Universe do for DP's legacy, given that the group only exists as a cultural force and not an active music duo these days?
Cédric Hervet: To me, Daft Punk never stopped existing. A legacy doesn't end when you stop making new work. Our creative outset with the Lego team has been to look at legacy not as something static, but an invitation to innovate and create. The music, the robots, the pyramid all live on through the fans, who keep making them their own. My role today is to look after that world and open up new territory for it. And that's exactly the spirit of Lego creativity: you build, you take it apart, you build again.
Animation from the original 'Daft Punk Concert' Lego Ideas set proposal
W*: Do you see any parity between the technology of the Lego brand and the way DP presented themselves over their career?
CH: For me, the common ground is imagination. Lego bricks are an extraordinary tool for creativity: you're handed some bricks, and it's up to you to build whatever is possible with them. That's also how Daft Punk started. Thomas and Guy-Man wanted to make electronic music, so they bought a bit of gear, figured it out, and created with what they had.
Daft Punk in action
As a kid, just the Lego packaging or the pages of the holiday catalogues made me feel like I was stepping into another world. You wanted to know what was hiding behind a Lego City building. With Daft Punk, we always played on that: leaving people room for their own imagination, their own interpretation.
Daft Punk cameo alongside Pharrell Williams and Nile Rodgers in Piece by Piece (2024)
W*: What are you most excited about with this collaboration? The sets? The technology? The new audience?
CH: First, something very personal. I've always loved Lego toys, and I dreamed about this collaboration for years. I still have to pinch myself. I played with Lego bricks as a kid, I spent many hours being creative with my children using them and as recently as last winter I was still giving them Lego Advent calendars. They're 20 and 19 now, which tells you it hasn't aged a day.
Animation from the original 'Daft Punk Concert' Lego Ideas set proposal
I also sometimes ask them whether Daft Punk's music sounds dated, because when you're inside it, it's hard to have perspective. Apparently it still feels very current to them. And then there's the pyramid. I was lucky enough to work on the stage design for the Alive 2007 tour.
Every night, I watched the show from the side of the pyramid. I was the audience's audience. Seeing thousands of people dance with smiles on their faces for an hour and a half was the greatest reward. So, seeing that pyramid come back in bricks, imagined by a father and his son during lockdown, is the link between generations I'd been dreaming of.
Lego x Daft Punk
W*: How did the collaboration come about - who approached who?
CH: To be honest, on our side, we had tried to approach the Lego Group several years ago. To me the connection was obvious, but the timing probably wasn't right yet. What really unlocked it was the fans.
The Lego Ideas Daft Punk Concert project won the Music to Our Ears challenge in 2020, then reached 10,000 supporters. This gave us an opportunity to see how naturally the two worlds fit together: ethically, aesthetically, culturally. The fact that fans made this collaboration possible is wonderful to me. Daft Punk's story is also a story of fans inspired by other artists.
Lego x Daft Punk
W*: How do you see the partnership with the Lego Group evolving over time?
CH: We're only at the first few bricks. The Lego universe is vast, and just seeing the two little robots, GM08 and TB3, step into it means a lot to me. They'll get to live their own lives there. I really love the Lego tone, especially in its animated content. It's a lot of fun, and it reveals a different, slightly offbeat side of the characters.
You get a first glimpse of that in the AV. The pyramid set is a first step. Beyond that, I can't say more for now, but I can’t wait to see this partnership unfold based on what brought it to life: fans sharing with each other and passing on creative experimentation from one generation to the next.