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 move is the latest in Rovio's quest for Angry Birds world domination. In addition to the seven Angry Birds games (including Angry Birds Seasons and Angry Birds Star Wars) there are Angry Birds books, Angry Birds merchandise and an Angry Birds cartoon. Rovio unveiled the in-game animated shorts in March and so far the toons have been viewed 150 million times.
It's amazing that such a simple game is spawning such a vast franchise. Who would have thought that throwing birds with a slingshot would result in a business worth hundreds of millions of dollars?
Sony clearly has an enormous amount of faith in the staying power of the brand, which has been around since 2009. Will people still be as obsessed with the game three years from now as they are now? I'm sure many people didn't think Angry Birds would still be as popular as it is four years after hitting the app store. The games have been downloaded 1.7 billion times.
Movies based on video games have a mixed success record. The live action Prince of Persia earned $335 million in 2010. The recent Silent Hill: Revelation brought in only $52 million (granted that was on a $20 million budget).
But so far the vast majority of video game movies have been based on serious console games like Lara Croft and Resident Evil. The Angry Birds movie will be breaking new ground. If it does well, expect plenty of smaller app games to follow suite.
Follow me on Twitter at DorothyatForbes.
