Universal Pictures has unveiled a new trailer for the latest animated feature from Illumination Entertainment, Sing. The studio, which first broke out with the Despicable Me and Minions movies, already had one hit film this year with The Secret Life of Pets, and now all signs point to Sing being one of the biggest films of the upcoming holiday movie season.

The film takes place in a world populated by anthropomorphic animals and revolves around a koala named Buster Moon (Matthew McConaughey), who must put on one big spectacular show to keep his theater from closing. To do so, he holds a singing contest open to the public, and the whole town shows up to audition for a role in the show. It’s basically a “backstage musical” mixed with The Voice, as the contestants sing covers of popular songs.

This new trailer doesn’t delve too much deeper into the plot, but it does showcase the film’s many, many popular songs as Eminem’s “Sing for the Moment”—which samples Aerosmith’s “Dream On”—plays over the second half of the trailer. This heavy use of popular music should certainly appeal to families looking for an entertaining holiday film, and indeed when the movie premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, critics noted that it has the potential to be a massive box office hit simply for its populist subject matter and show-centric storyline. The Secret Life of Pets pulled in $868 million this summer, and Sing has the benefit of being the only all-ages movie opening over Christmas. So, yeah, this could be huge.

Another curious aspect of Sing—it’s directed by A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy helmer Garth Jennings, who enlisted some very famous directors for voice cameos.

Check out the new trailer below. The film also features the voices of Reese Witherspoon, Seth MacFarlane, Scarlett Johansson, John C. Reilly, Taron Egerton, Tori Kelly, Nick Kroll, Nick Offerman, Peter Serafinowicz, Beck Bennett, Jennifer Saunders, and Jennifer Hudson. Sing opens in theaters on December 21st.

Here's the official synopsis for Sing:

Set in a world like ours but entirely inhabited by animals, Sing stars Buster Moon (Academy Award® winner Matthew McConaughey), a dapper Koala who presides over a once-grand theater that has fallen on hard times. Buster is an eternal optimist—okay, maybe a bit of a scoundrel—who loves his theater above all and will do anything to preserve it. Now facing the crumbling of his life’s ambition, he has one final chance to restore his fading jewel to its former glory by producing the world’s greatest singing competition.

 

Five lead contestants emerge: A mouse (Seth MacFarlane) who croons as smoothly as he cons, a timid teenage elephant (Tori Kelly) with an enormous case of stage fright, an overtaxed mother (Academy Award® winner Reese Witherspoon) run ragged tending a litter of 25 piglets, a young gangster gorilla (Taron Egerton) looking to break free of his family’s felonies, and a punk-rock porcupine (Scarlett Johansson) struggling to shed her arrogant boyfriend and go solo. Each animal arrives under Buster’s marquee believing that this is their shot to change the course of their life.