Sony Pictures Animation stirred all kinds of emotions when it first confirmed plans to build a feature film based on Emoji – Smiley emoticons, confused emotions, angry emoticons, you name it – but perhaps the one reaction that resounded around the four corners of the Internet was a general feeling of apathy.
But low and behold, The Emoji Movie is beginning to ease the wheels into motion, after the studio outlined some preliminary details and plot points during the ongoing CinemaCon event in Las Vegas. Situated in a place known as Emoji Valley, the movie looks to be rooted within the cybernetic walls of a mobile phone – think Disney’s Wreck-It Ralph – centering on a group of Emoji going about their daily business.
The first and all-too-brief plot description reads as so: “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.”
Unsurprisingly, The Emoji Movie also represents a potentially lucrative way for Sony to draw the interest of major brands. Spotify, for instance, has inked a deal to feature in the film as a prominent mobile app. First reported by The Wrap, the studio’s chairman Tom Rothman touched base on the creative process at play: “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.”
Penned by Eric Siegel and Anthony Leondis, there’s still no word on a release date for Sony’s The Emoji Movie, nor if any other applications will be joining Spotify on the digital home screen. Expect more details to emerge in the coming months.