Last year a bizarre announcement came out of Sony Pictures. It was like something out of their leaked E-mails yet they were admitting it willingly…they were putting an animated movie into production based around emojis.
It’s the kind of outer-space “Coupon The Movie” thinking you occasionally get from movie studios; the kind of logic that says “If X is popular, people will pay to see a movie based around it,” no matter what X happens to be. Now we know a little more, and wait’ll you hear the original premise. Kristine Belson, who heads Sony’s animation division and looks like this, told the press “Inside your phone, there’s a secret world – and we enter through the text app where we discover Emoji Valley, where the industrious Emoji live and work.”
But the plot isn’t the important thing…Sony spent most of their press time mentioning the brands they would be featuring in it. For example, Spotify would be incorporated into the narrative by having the emojis “navigate boats on an actual stream to represent music streaming.” They’re currently coaxing other big digital brands to be used, with Facebook being the biggest target.
They feel they’re crafting a digital Toy Story, but I can’t be alone in being more reminded of “Food Fight,” the ill-fated CGI movie where a bunch of supermarket brands were rounded up and woven into a story. It’s regarded as the worst animated movie ever made, not only for being a large commercial, but because somebody stole the servers from the studio when the movie was close to finished and they had to hurriedly mash together some quick art to finish the picture.
The emoji movie (which has no title, but we’re expecting something along the lines of “Emojis”) is scheduled for a 2017 release. Given that the movie was announced LAST year, this doesn’t give Sony much time to render everything….then again, it’s yellow blobs on featureless backgrounds. More money saved!
Sony’s presentation was preceded by a speech from CEO Tom Rothman, who sort of offered an apology for the material he was about to reveal. “We have a number of power brands returning, relaunching, or being reintroduced — and yet at Sony we also believe that it is vital to maintain a commitment to originality,” he said. Then he introduced the emoji movie.
[Source: The Wrap]
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