Just when you thought Hollywood had run out of ideas comes news that Sony just won a intense bidding war for the right to make a movie about emoji. Seriously.

Yes, those cute -- and sometimes crude -- little symbols you use in texts and on Twitter are set to hit the big screen in their own movie, written by Men at Work") and Anthony Leondis ("Kung Fu Panda: Secrets of the Masters"), with Leondis directing. Deadline reports that Sony snatched up the pair's pitch (which already included storyboards) for a rumored seven-figure payout. That's a lot of dollar sign emojis.

According to Deadline, the bidding on the project was so intense because "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." And the trade reports that a competing emoji project (that's a sentence we never though we'd type) is already in the works, making it crucial for Sony to act quickly and get its flick out first.

We have no idea how a film that's based solely on smartphone texting technology could possibly have any sort of narrative, but then again, "Angry Birds" is due out next summer, so we suppose anything is possible. Here's hoping "Emoji: The Movie" winds up more like "The LEGO Movie" and less like "Battleship."

[via: Deadline]

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