Hey folks, Scurlock here.
Fun fact: I lived in Finland for a year, home of Rovio Entertainment, the once monolithic mobile gaming company that brought ANGRY BIRDS to the masses in 2009. It's a game that has been downloaded over two billion times, and has spawned new (same) games, animated television and an avalanche of apparel, toys and more.
A digitally animated movie made sense...until it didn't.
In most of the world, the ANGRY BIRDS franchise had essentially ninja-vanished, and as awash in backbacks, beanies and toddler tennis shoes as Finland was just a year ago, even in Angry Birds ground zero the franchise really was a shadow of its former self. Rovio went the way of Nokia in many ways, and I guess it just feels weird that a worldwide digitally animated feature even exists.
And yet, here we are, with an 80 million dollar film in THE ANGRY BIRDS MOVIE due out via Sony Pictures Imageworks in spring 2016. And, well...I'll be damned if this latest holiday promo for the film isn't pretty cute.
Check it out, plus the original teaser trailer below:
Last August, Rovio announced the dissolution of over thirty percent of its workforce, excluding the folks working on this very film. Rovio has all but abandoned the gaming sphere, explicitly stating that it is now an entertainment entity rather than a game developer. Rovio are hanging their big screen success aspirations on a game franchise long in decline, with a relatively small footprint in other media. That's ballsy as hell.
But, they're bringing some big guns. A swath of SNL pals in Bill Hader, Jason Sudeikis, Kate McKinnon and Maya Rudolph, with Tyrion Lannister himself Peter Dinklage, Josh Gad (JOBS), Danny McBride (all of the funny things), Keegan-Michael Key (KEY & PEELE) and way, way more.
They're also bringing two art department vets for first-time director duty in Fergal Reilly (THE IRON GIANT) and Clay Kaytis (FROZEN). Perhaps most interestingly, Jon Vitti penned the script for this animated venture. He's previously worked on some of the best seasons of THE SIMPSONS, THE CRITIC, KING OF THE HILL and THE LARRY SANDERS SHOW.
So like, who the crap knows? It could do gangbusters, it could pass in and out of theaters unceremoniously then clean house on VOD, or it could just kinda not be a thing and go away.
Either way, they'll still be selling Angry Bird-themed dish sets in Helsinki long after we're all dead, whether the company makes it big in animation or not.
