Emojis are popular. Hollywood, discovering that something is popular and seeing the door “opened” by The LEGO Movie (without realizing the amount of talent and skill that went into that picture), has now jumped on the bandwagon, and next year we’ll be getting The Emoji Movie. In the film, T.J. Miller (Silicon Valley) voices Gene, an outsider emoji who’s abnormal because he can display more than one expression. Gene “teams up with his handy best friend Hi-5 and the notorious codebreaker Jailbreak on an epic adventure through the apps on a teenager's phone,” and because this movie is all about branding, expect to see “cameos” from Candy Crush Saga, Dropbox, Instagram, Just Dance®, Spotify, Twitter, YouTube, Crackle, Facebook, Shazam, Snapchat, and Twitch. There’s the potential for this to be wry and clever, but there’s also the potential for it to go horribly wrong.

The first trailer is less than encouraging. Rather than sell the plot or even the main character, this trailer introduces us to Mel Meh (Steven Wright), the “Meh” emoji who’s also Gene’s father (I really don’t want to know how emoji procreation works). Perhaps some people will find it cute, but I assume others will respond with the “baffled” emoji, or, in an old-fashioned twist, question mark punctuation.

Check out The Emoji Movie trailer below along with the first images. The film opens August 4, 2017.

Here’s the official synopsis for The Emoji Movie:

The Emoji Movie unlocks the never-before-seen secret world inside your smartphone. Hidden within the messaging app is Textopolis, a bustling city where all your favorite emojis live, hoping to be selected by the phone’s user. In this world, each emoji has only one facial expression – except for Gene (T.J. Miller), an exuberant emoji who was born without a filter and is bursting with multiple expressions. Determined to become “normal” like the other emojis, Gene enlists the help of his handy best friend Hi-5 (James Corden) and the notorious code breaker emoji Jailbreak (Ilana Glazer). Together, they embark on an epic “app-venture” through the apps on the phone, each its own wild and fun world, to find the Code that will fix Gene. But when a greater danger threatens the phone, the fate of all emojis depends on these three unlikely friends who must save their world before it’s deleted forever. Directed by Tony Leondis. Written by Tony Leondis & Eric Siegel and Mike White. Produced by Michelle Raimo Kouyate.

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Image via Sony Pictures Animation
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Image via Sony Pictures Animation