Sony Preps Toon Film Based on Social Media Emoji

Deadline: Sony Pictures Animation has won a three-studio auction for an animated movie pitch centering on the Emoji, those lovable round headed figures that are as much a staple of social media correspondence as adverbs and adjectives. This appears to be a zeitgeist moment for these ideograms that hatched in Japan and have spread worldwide. Unlike, say Lego, there are also no underlying rights here to purchase, which makes this as much a catnip idea to Hollywood as public domain fairy tales that fuel so many blockbusters.