Sony Pictures Entertainment has nabbed the worldwide distribution rights for Rovio’s upcoming CG-animate feature based on its Angry Birds franchise. The 3D film is being developed, produced, and financed by Rovio Entertainment and will be released worldwide by Sony on July 1, 2016.
Michael Lynton, Chairman & CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment, Amy Pascal, Co-chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment, and Mikael Hed, CEO of Rovio Entertainment jointly announced their partnership today. John Cohen and David Maisel – producer of Despicable Me and executive producer of Iron Man, respectively – are both on board for the new Angry Birds feature film. Cohen will serve as producer and Maisel is executive producer.
Lynton and Pascal said, “Every studio in town would love to add Angry Birds to their slate. There are few titles out there that bring this kind of excitement, brand awareness and built-in audience to the table. We’re thrilled to be distributing this film and we hope this is just the beginning of what will be a long relationship with Rovio as we look for ways to work on future projects together.”
The original Angry Birds game, which was first introduced in 2009, remains the number one paid app of all time. To date, the Angry Birds and Bad Piggies games have been downloaded more than 1.7 billion times across platforms and versions.
The movie marks Rovio’s first foray into feature films, although fans have already been introduced to the Angry Birds world with the weekly Angry Birds Toons animated series. Rovio launched the series in March through its Angry Birds apps as well as on select video-on-demand channel providers, Smart TVs, connected devices, and on select TV networks around the world. Angry Birds Toons has been a big success for Rovio bringing in over 150 million views from the Angry Birds apps within the first six weeks.
