It only just occurred to me that The Lego Movie had Star Wars characters in it. In fact, after a quick glance at imdb, I see that both Anthony Daniels and Billy Dee Williams provided their voices. Maybe that was Lord and Miller’s built-in connection to the franchise that led to them getting the job.
Maybe they also just really wanted to direct this movie and had a really good agent. In retrospect, it almost seems like Kennedy needed a big name attached to the movie and L&M seemed like a good idea at the time. But it’s still kind of baffling to hear that Kennedy and Kasdan wanted a movie that felt like a Western … and yet hired two guys known pretty much solely for making comedies.