Timing is essentially everything. This Friday, Sony will release their new Adam Sandler movie Pixels in which beloved video game characters come to life. The future is now, folks, as Deadline is reporting that Sony Animation has locked down an almost-seven-figure deal to bring Emoji — a film about, uh, emoji — to the big-screen:
The project will be co-written by Eric Siegel and Anthony Leondis, with the latter directing the feature. Leondis pitched the project around to studios, with storyboards for how the movie would play out. Three studios bid–I’ve heard Warner Bros and Paramount were the others–but none more aggressively than Sony.
Unlike Pac Man and the other video game characters set to infiltrate theaters later this week, these little round yellow faced ideograms have no underlying rights that need to be purchased. Emoji is allegedly not the only pitch about these correspondence-themed graphics making its way through Hollywood, which would explain Sony’s quick snatch and grab of the project.
Given the rise in popularity of emoji, since their Japanese inception, Siegel (Men at Work, Family Tools) and Leondis (Kung Fu Panda: Secrets of the Masters) now have the responsibility — or burden — of bringing these animated characters to theatrical life.
I wonder what Adam Sandler is up to.
(Via Deadline)
