Emojis Are Coming to a Theater Near You This will either be a huge thumbs up or a major frowny face.
By Carly Okyle
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The success of last year's Lego Movie might have filmmakers thinking that "everything is awesome" when it comes to script ideas, but Sony's new project has us like:
Sony Pictures Animation outbid other studios for the rights to a movie pitch about emojis -- the pictorial emotions and objects used in texts and social media posts that people either love or hate.
The deal cost the studio nearly $1 million. The film will be helmed by Kung Fu Panda director Anthony Leondis, who will also co-write the script with Eric Siegel, who produced TBS's new show Men at Work and who has acted in movies including 2002's Gilda Radner: It's Always Something. The studio chief told Kristine Belson, SPA's president, to be aggressive in securing the script, according to Deadline. Michelle Raimo Kouyate will produce the movie.
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The lack of property rights for emojis, along with their global popularity, could make the film a smart buy for the studio, but the storyline for the flick is still unknown. The success of other circular yellow characters -- the minions that first appeared as sidekicks in Despicable Me and were promoted to the main characters of their namesake movie, released earlier this month -- might be a marketing draw, Vulture speculates.
Doubling down on pop-culture touchstones, Sony is also releasing Pixels today. Pixels, directed by Chris Columbus and starring Adam Sandler, is an animated and live-action movie about aliens who attack Earth in the form of videogame characters like Pac Man.
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