WTF: An Emoji Movie is Being Developed at Sony Pictures Animation

Well, the end of the world is apparently upon us. Deadline is reporting that Sony Pictures Animation beat out Warner Bros. and Paramount on a bidding war to acquire a movie pitch about emoji, the symbols on smartphones that are popular in texting and social media. Emoji, Hollywood? That's what we're sinking to now?

Since the shapes are in the public domain, the studio didn't have to pay any licensing fees for them. Deadline's hearing that another emoji-based pitch is going out soon, so we may be in the early stages of an emoji-pocalypse at the movies. Eric Siegel (Men at Work) and Anthony Leondis (B.O.O.: Bureau of Otherworldly Operations) will co-write the script and Leondis will direct.

I know I should be used to Hollywood having bad ideas, but they still know how to shock me. Every few months, there's a decision that's so incalcuably dumb that it causes me to shake my head and question why we even bother with any of this. Congratulations, Sony Pictures Animation: your choice is the source of my latest round of existential questioning.