Human beings have never been more connected. With the smartphone, we are never out of touch from each other – and constantly in touch with people around the world. And with a simple invention, we are now able to communicate with people who are separated from us by language, borders, oceans…
…after all, everyone knows what 🙂 means.
Now, Sony Pictures Animation takes you into the secret world inside your phone for a rollicking adventure in The Emoji Movie (in Philippine cinemas August 23, 2017).
The Emoji Movie unlocks the never-before-seen secret world inside your smartphone. Hidden within the messaging app is Textopolis, a bustling city where all your favorite emojis live, hoping to be selected by the phone’s user. In this world, each emoji has only one facial expression – except for Gene (T.J. Miller), an exuberant emoji who was born without a filter and is bursting with multiple expressions. Determined to become “normal” like the other emojis, Gene enlists the help of his handy best friend Hi-5 (James Corden) and the notorious code breaker emoji Jailbreak (Anna Faris). Together, they embark on an epic “app-venture” through the apps on the phone, each its own wild and fun world, to find the Code that will fix Gene. But when a greater danger threatens the phone, the fate of all emojis depends on these three unlikely friends who must save their world before it’s deleted forever.
“Emojis help us express ourselves in ways we don’t have time to express, or don’t have the forethought to express, or are afraid to express,” says Tony Leondis, one of the writers and the director of The Emoji Movie. “When I get a heart-eyes emoji from my mom, it actually means something – it makes me smile. In this world of technology, the human heart has found a way to connect.”
“Everybody’s using emojis – they’re part of our everyday life,” says producer Michelle Raimo Kouyate. “I always enjoy animated movies that go inside a world that you deal with every day, but never gave a thought to.”
And for T.J. Miller, who voices the lead role of an emoji named Gene in the film, that’s the perfect jumping off point for a movie. “Parents use emojis with kids and kids use emojis with parents, so everyone is in on the joke from the get-go. From the first scene, you think, ‘Oh, I use that emoji all the time, my friend uses the dancing woman emoji,’” he says. “And when you add the fun of having Sir Pooptrick Stewart playing Poop, Sofia Vergara playing Flamenca, Anna Faris playing Jailbreak – she’s so dynamic – Maya Rudolph is so funny, Steven Wright, one of my icons in the standup world, Jennifer Coolidge and James Corden are never not funny… I was excited to join them because it seemed like the project had the elements to be a great and very surprising movie.”
The Emoji Movie is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International.