Emoji the movie?

The Lego Movie proved that anything can be turned into a blockbuster franchise with sufficient imagination. Now the stakes have been raised, with an upcoming animated movie centring on the emoji, the (usually) yellow spherical faces and symbols used for text and social media correspondence, hoping to have the same success.

Sony Pictures Animation is producing the movie, co-written by Eric Siegel and Anthony Leondis, with the latter directing, according to Deadline. The project drew great interest from rival studios, because unlike Lego, emoji are in the public domain — meaning that there were no rights to purchase. Deadline reports that a competing emoji pitch is also being shopped around.

Leondis directed Kung Fu Panda: Secrets of the Masters, an animated short that accompanied the DVD/Blu-ray release of Kung Fu Panda 2. He most recently completed the computer-animated feature BOO: Bureau of Otherworldly Operations for DreamWorks Animation, featuring the voices of Bill Murray, Melissa McCarthy and Matt Bomer.