The Angry Birds Movie

Plot

On Bird Island, an island inhabited by flightless birds, the reclusive Red is sentenced to an anger management class after his temper causes a "premature hatching" of a customer's egg. Resentful, Red avoids getting to know his classmates Chuck, Bomb, and Terence, as well as the class's instructor Matilda. One day, a boat docks at the island's shore containing green-colored pigs, and their captain Leonard, who claim to be peaceful explorers bringing offerings of friendship. The pigs are accepted on the island and introduce the birds to innovative technologies such as slingshots and helium balloons.

More pigs arrive and seemingly adjust to the bird's society, but Red soon becomes suspicious of their motives, as they slowly overwhelm the island. He recruits Chuck and Bomb to help him find Mighty Eagle, a giant bald eagle said to be the protector of the island, and the only bird that can fly, but who has not been seen for many years. They find Mighty Eagle on top of Bird Mountain, but he is now overweight, self-absorbed, and largely in retirement. Looking through the Mighty Eagle's binoculars, Red's group sees the pigs planting explosives around the island while the birds are at a rave party. They realize the party was actually a cover for their plan to steal the birds' eggs. Red, Bomb, and Chuck attempt to warn the other birds and stop the pigs, but they arrive too late as the pigs escape with the eggs and their explosives destroy the village. When the birds realize what happened, they apologize to Red for not believing him, and the forgiving red bird rallies them to let their anger loose and retrieve their eggs.

The birds construct a boat and sail to Piggy Island, where they find the pigs living in a walled city and Leonard, who is actually revealed to be King Mudbeard, the king of Piggy Island. Deducing the eggs are most likely in the castle at the center of the city, the birds attack and defeat the pigs by firing themselves over the walls using their gifted giant slingshot. However, when Terrence attempts to launch himself into the city, he accidentally snaps the slingshot in half after pulling himself too far back. Meanwhile, Red, Chuck, and Bomb make it to the castle and find the eggs in a boiler room, where the pigs plan to cook and eat them. Mighty Eagle arrives, having watched these events through his binoculars and had a change of heart, and carries the eggs out of the castle. While the birds escape, one egg falls out and rolls back into the castle. Red battles Leonard and retrieves the egg, escaping as the pigs' reserve of explosives blow up and destroys Piggy Island. Red reunites with the other birds as the rescued egg hatches, revealing three little blue birds (The Blues), and is declared a hero. He, Chuck, and Bomb are approached by Mighty Eagle, who claims that he wasn't lazy but instead deliberately made the birds lose faith in him so they could find faith in themselves. Returning to Bird Island, the birds rebuild Red's house, which had been moved by Red near the edge of the island and was gradually destroyed whenever a boat full of pigs had arrived, in the middle of their village. All of the birds that have hatched sing a song to Red to thank him and enshrine him as a legendary hero, and Red lets Chuck and Bomb move in with him.

During the end credits, the pigs are revealed to survive Piggy Island's destruction, as King Mudbeard begins to make a new plan to steal the eggs. In a mid-credits scene, the three blue birds that Red rescued use the rebuilt slingshot to launch themselves out to sea.

Production

The film was officially announced in December 2012, although IGN noted that this was "After months of speculation" The success of the Angry Birds Toons series which according to Rovio employee, Jami Laes, "validated" the idea of creating a feature film. The first image from the film was revealed in October 2014 along with the ensemble cast, which includes Jason Sudeikis, Josh Gad, Danny McBride, Bill Hader, Maya Rudolph, and Peter Dinklage. Gad at first declined to star in the movie, feeling it was too similar to his role as Olaf in the 2013 film Frozen but the director eventually convinced him to sign through a 30-minute "visual pitch". The film's budget is estimated at $80 million (€75 million). In addition, Rovio and Sony Entertainment will spend roughly €100 million for the marketing and distribution of the film. Exact share was not disclosed, but Rovio will invest in the film over €100 million, which would make it the largest budget in the film industry in Finland, where its most expensive film was Big Game, a 2014 adventure film, made for €8.5 million. Despite the massive budget, Rovio's CEO Mikael Hed stated that "it is the one that I don't ever lose any sleep over", calling it "tremendously strong as a story". During August 2015, Rovio announced that they were expecting to cut 250 jobs equaling 40% of the company. The only sector spared from the job cuts would be personnel working on the movie.

When multiple major studios approached Rovio to discuss the production of the film adaptation in 2010, Hed eventually decided to have Rovio establish its own in-house animation studio and have it work on the film, rather than risk losing creative control in allowing a third-party studio to produce it. David Maisel, the founding chairman of Marvel Studios, offered to help Hed and Rovio produce the film, and eventually, well-known producers John Cohen from Illumination Entertainment and Catherine Winder from Lucasfilm pitched in to assist with the production.

The decision to have fully limbed versions of the Angry Birds characters not appear anywhere else until the film adaptation sprang from a perceived need to "protect" the film and make it "as big as possible", which was expressed during a discussion between Maisel and Hed in 2011, over how they were to envision the film adaptation during its planning stages.

Soundtrack

The Angry Birds Movie: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack is the soundtrack album for The Angry Birds Movie. The album was released on May 6, 2016.

Track listing

ATCO Records released the score on May 12, 2016.

Release

The film was initially scheduled to be released on July 1, 2016, but it was later moved up to a May 20 release date. On September 23, 2015, the teaser trailer for the film was released, followed by the second trailer four months later. An international trailer made its debut in March 2016.

The film was released in Finland and the UK on May 13, 2016, and in the United States on May 20, 2016.

Promotion

An estimated $300 million marketing effort helped promote The Angry Birds Movie, and along with its production budget, the spending has reached $400 million, making it the biggest-ever campaign for an animated Sony movie, according to executives at the company. Sony's marketing campaign for the film began nine months before its release with the marketing campaign focused on the characters, their unique personalities and the humor of the voice cast via custom media promotions. Sony partnered with more than 100 partners worldwide including tie-ins with McDonald's, Citroën, Ziploc and Panasonic. To help with the film's promotion, Rovio made a deal with The Lego Group to make a series of 6 Lego sets, scheduled for a spring 2016 release. A balloon themed after Red debuted at the 2015 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade to promote the film.

To further promote the film, Rovio temporarily changed the app icons for most of the games in the Angry Birds series such that they would show the cinematic version of Red. Examples include Red giving a stern look while riding a racecar for Angry Birds GO!, Red holding a katana over his shoulder for Angry Birds Fight! or Red wearing a knight's helmet and wielding a wooden sword for Angry Birds Epic.

Home media

The Angry Birds Movie was released on digital HD on July 29, 2016, and on Blu-ray and DVD on August 16, 2016, from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, with 4 Hatchlings shorts included. The film topped the home video sales chart for the week ending on August 21, 2016.

Tie-in games

Following the release of the film, three games in the Angry Birds series were released that drew upon the film's universe and characters, with all of them being free to play on iOS and Android:

Box office

The Angry Birds Movie grossed $107.5 million in North America and $242.3 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $349.8 million. Worldwide, it is the second highest-grossing video game film of all-time, behind Warcraft ($433.5 million). It also became the most successful Finnish film of all time. Deadline.com calculated the net profit of the film to be $72 million, when factoring together all expenses and revenues for the film.

In North America, the film opened on May 20, 2016, alongside Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising and The Nice Guys and was projected to gross between $35–40 million, possibly going as high as $45 million, from 3,932 theaters in its opening weekend. Deadline noted that the film had the benefit of being the only animated feature until Disney/Pixar's Finding Dory arrives in theaters on June 17. Fandango reported that The Angry Birds Movie was the top selling film for the weekend, pacing in tandem with Hotel Transylvania 2. It grossed $800,000 from its Thursday night previews and $11 million on its opening day. In its opening weekend it grossed $38.2 million, finishing first at the box office and marked the third biggest Sony animated opening of all time, behind Hotel Transylvania and Hotel Transylvania 2. It also scored the second-best debut weekend ever for a video game adaptation, behind the $47 million debut of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. It had a 51% drop in its second weekend after facing competition from X-Men: Apocalypse and Alice Through the Looking Glass, grossing $18.7 million.

Internationally, The Angry Birds Movie was released in the Philippines on May 11 and 74 other markets (63% of its total marketplace) on May 13, at least one week ahead of its US release. It finished first in 37 territories and second overall at the international box office behind Captain America: Civil War. Benefiting from the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, it grossed $43 million. In its second weekend, it added 9 additional territories including China, South Korea and the Netherlands and grossed $55.5 million from 83 markets. Overall, the top openings for the film was recorded in China ($29.2 million), Russia ($5.7 million), the United Kingdom and Ireland ($3.1 million), Germany ($2.9 million), Mexico ($2.8 million) and Brazil ($2.7 million). It opened next in Italy on June 15 and Japan on October 1.

In terms of total earnings, the biggest markets outside North America are China ($75.8 million), United Kingdom ($15 million), Russia ($11.99 million), and Germany ($11.97 million).

Critical response

The Angry Birds Movie received mixed reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, the film has an approval rating of 44% based on 144 reviews and an average rating of 4.9/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "The Angry Birds Movie is substantially more entertaining than any film adapted from an app has any right to be – which may or may not be much of an endorsement." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 43 out of 100 based on 27 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.

Lindsey Bahr of The Associated Press gave the film a positive review by writing, "Ultimately, The Angry Birds Movie does a decent job exploring the merits of anger. It's no Inside Out, but it has heart and life, which isn't too shabby for any film – app or not". Variety's Guy Lodge called the film: "A fast, fizzy and frenetically entertaining extension of the manic gaming franchise that, at its zenith, had children of all ages glued to their smartphone screens". While Rafer Guzman of Newsday found the film's plot to be "pretty thin gruel", he thought the script was quite funny and that the animation was brightly colored and appealing.

Glenn Kenny of The New York Times gave the film a negative review and overall said: "The kids of today deserve better. So do I, come to think of it". In his review for TheWrap, Alonso Duralde wrote, "Let's be clear, then: The Angry Birds Movie isn't pointless because it's based on an app. It's pointless because it's pointless". Stephen Whitty of the New York Daily News gave the film one out of five stars and overall said: "The Angry Birds Movie is just fowl".

Follow-up media

Sequel

In August 2016, Rovio had begun working on a sequel to the film. The sequel's release date is planned for September 20, 2019, coinciding on the tenth anniversary of the original video game. The Angry Birds Movie 2 will be directed by Thurop Van Orman and co-directed by John Rice. It will be produced by John Cohen and written by Peter Ackerman. The animation will be provided again by Sony Pictures Imageworks, in collaboration with Sony Pictures Animation.