Ever since Pixar released Toy Story in 1995, movie studios (mostly Pixar itself) have been trying to replicate its success with similar movies about the secret lives of things/animals. Sometimes these movies work out really well and allow us to look at something normal in a fun and new way, but other times they’re just aggressively lazy excuses to sell people a generic, uninspired plot with characters that look like recognizable things from real life. It’s a bit early to know which of those two camps the emoji movie—which Sony Pictures Animation paid a ton of money for in July—will fall into, but maybe someone can make an educated guess now that Sony has released more information about the project.
As reported by /Film, Sony’s Kristine Belson revealed some details about the plot of the emoji movie during the company’s recent CinemaCon presentation. Predictably, the movie will be about the emojis inside someone’s phone coming to life and living “in their own secret world” within the phone’s texting app. For whatever reason, the hero emojis (we’re gonna guess it’ll be the little poop, the 100, and one of the faces) will have to leave their home app and “go to the world of the wallpaper,” which is like a video game-style overworld featuring a bunch of different apps that each contain their own universe. /Film says Sony showed concept art of emojis “taking a boat trip in a music app” that “didn’t look too promising,” and the finished film will reportedly feature nods to “many popular apps.” Presumably, this will be the emoji movie’s equivalent of Wreck-It Ralph’s parade of classic video game characters and the many cameos in The Lego Movie, but with Neko Atsume instead of Pac-Man.
Sony has the emoji movie set to hit theaters on August 11, 2017.