Look at your recent texts, WhatsApp messages, Snapchats, Tinder chats, and tweets. If you have used emoji – let’s say more than a dozen in the past few days – then this is your fault and you’re not allowed to groan.
To be fair, this is all of our faults. We’re emoji crazy. Of course this should happen.
It looks like we’re getting an emoji movie at some point in the near future. Deadline is reporting that Sony Pictures has won a bidding war with Warner Bros and Paramount for the rights to an untitled animated movie pitch based on emoji.
The movie will be directed by Anthony Leondis (Kung Fu Panda: Secrets of the Masters). Leondis also directed the upcoming B.O.O.: Bureau of Otherworldly Operations starring Matt Bomer, Melissa McCarthy, Bill Murray, and Seth Rogen. That’s still waiting on a release date, however.
Once again. We all deserve this.
Now, check this out:
This appears to be a zeitgeist moment for these ideograms that hatched in Japan and have spread worldwide. Unlike like, say Lego, there are also no underlying rights here to purchase, which makes this as much a catnip idea to Hollywood as public domain fairy tales that fuel so many blockbusters. I’ve heard that another pitch is going to be shopped shortly, so there might be reason for Sony Animation to move quickly.
Two emoji movies? The A Bug’s Life / Antz battle for the modern era.
Or, just like the Steve Jobs movie battle. Which emoji film with be the Ashton Kutcher debacle, and which one will be the Aaron Sorkin hopefully-not-debacle-but-we-don’t-really-know-yet?
Two eggplants way, way down.
