The Angry Birds Movie 2 is a 2019 animated comedy film based on Rovio Entertainment's Angry Birds video game series, produced by Columbia Pictures, Sony Pictures Animation, and Rovio Entertainment, and distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing. The sequel to The Angry Birds Movie (2016), the film was directed by Thurop Van Orman (in his directorial debut) and co-directed by John Rice from a screenplay by Peter Ackerman, Eyal Podell and Jonathon E. Stewart. It is an international co-production between the Finland and the United States. Jason Sudeikis, Josh Gad, Danny McBride, Maya Rudolph, Tony Hale, Anthony Padilla, Bill Hader, and Peter Dinklage reprise their voice roles from the first film, with newcomers Leslie Jones, Rachel Bloom, Awkwafina, Sterling K. Brown, Pete Davidson, Zach Woods, Dove Cameron, Lil Rel Howery, Eugenio Derbez, Tiffany Haddish, JoJo Siwa, and Brooklynn Prince joining the ensemble voice cast. In the film, birds Red (Sudeikis), Chuck (Gad), Bomb (McBride), and Silver (Bloom), are forced to team up with pigs Leonard (Hader), Courtney (Awkwafina), and Garry (Brown) to foil plans by Zeta (Jones) and the rest of the eagles on Eagle Island when an ice ball from Zeta's advanced super-weapon threatens both of their Islands.
Production on a sequel to The Angry Birds Movie began in August 2016. New ideas for the film were conceived, with the premise being that the birds and pigs work together to save themselves, which very rarely happens in most Angry Birds games. New characters for the film were announced in March 2019 along with new cast members. The animators were tasked with attempting to create more realistic feather systems for the Birds' plumage and designing visual effects for snow, ice, water and lava for the film. Heitor Pereira returned to compose the film's score, with artists such as Kesha and Luke Combs contributing tracks for the film. It also features eighteen classical pop songs from the 1960s to 2000s decades from famous artists and different genres from the soundtrack, like the first film.
The Angry Birds Movie 2 was theatrically released in Finland on August 7, 2019, and in the United States on August 14 in RealD 3D formats. While it was not as financially successful as its predecessor, grossing $152.8 million on a $65 million budget, it received a positive reaction from critics, saying was considered an improvement over its predecessor. A sequel, The Angry Birds Movie 3, is in production, with Prime Focus Studios and Rovio's new parent company Sega Sammy Group producing the film with animation being handled by DNEG Animation.
Years after Piggy Island's destruction,[a] Red protects Bird Island from the pigs, led by King Leonard Mudbeard, who are in a prank war against the birds and have rebuilt Piggy Island. One day, a giant ice ball from nearby Eagle Island hits the sea near Piggy Island, forcing the pigs to seek and agree to a permanent truce with the birds. Zeta, the leader of Eagle Island, is angry with her frozen surroundings and wants to occupy the two islands by shooting ice balls from a superweapon to force their inhabitants to evacuate. Red's two best friends, Chuck and Bomb, surprise and ask Red to join them in a speed dating activity, where Red meets Chuck's sister Silver, an engineering student, who deems Red incompatible. Meanwhile, Zoe - the daughter of Red's classmate Terence and teacher Matilda - loses the eggs containing her unborn sisters while playing with her friends, Vincent and Samantha, so they try to recover the eggs.
Leonard visits and convinces Red to form an alliance, recruiting Chuck, Bomb, Silver, Mighty Eagle, and Leonard's new assistant Courtney. A secret meeting in Mighty Eagle's cave gets disrupted when Zeta's superweapon hits Eagle Mountain, which alarms the other birds living on Bird Island. As the team, now joined by pig gadgeteer Garry, travels to Eagle Island by submarine, Red assures the other birds that they do not need to evacuate. Once there, Mighty Eagle confesses that Zeta was once his fiance, but he abandoned her due to cowardice before he flies away. Red insists on fighting alone, but Silver decides to follow him instead. They intrude the base from the mouth of the weapon and get captured and frozen into inflatable water toys. Zeta tells them her plan to fire ice balls filled with lava at both islands and demonstrates her newly upgraded cannon. Red, regretting not telling the birds to evacuate, admits his wish to be liked by everyone to Silver, who comforts him and frees them both. Meanwhile, the other team members disguise themselves as an eagle and grab a key card to get into the base, reunited with Red and Silver and establishes a plan to destroy the cannon as it begins to load up ammunition in ten minutes for the actual attack on both islands.
Red and Silver put themselves inside an ice ball and roll it down the spiralling ammunition track of Zeta's cannon, with their allies distracting the eagles and working to sever the track by reaching and pulling a switch so that the ball flies off and crushes the cannon. The plan fails and Zeta and her guards confronted them, giving her a chance to fire the weapon. Mighty Eagle arrives and makes a desperate attempt to stop Zeta by apologizing to her for abandoning her. Zeta brushes him off, revealing his real name is Ethan and that her assistant Debbie is their daughter. While Zeta is distracted, Chuck ties up the weapon using Silver's new invention, a very strong string called Super-String, which catches and decelerates the lava balls after Zeta fires them. As the string breaks, the hatchlings, who finally recovered their eggs, along with some piglets who had joined them on their quest back home, pass by Eagle Island and help grasp the string. The lava balls slide back into the cannon, destroying it and the base. Everyone escapes, and Mighty Eagle protects Debbie from being crushed by a metal plate, redeeming himself to her and Zeta.
Mighty Eagle and Zeta get married on Bird Island, with Red as the chief witness and Debbie as the flower girl, and the rest of the birds, pigs, and eagles celebrate. Afterwards, Red credits Silver and the entire team for saving the islands, and as a result, finds himself even more beloved for his honesty and selflessness and starts a relationship. Meanwhile, the hatchlings discover they have accidentally swapped Zoe's eggs by mistook her eggs, so they give them back to their mother, who has brought the newly born sisters. However, as soon as the older hatchlings take their eyes off them, the sisters stow away onto the boa constrictor's boat, causing the cycle to repeat.
A sequel to The Angry Birds Movie was announced in August 2016.[4] It was directed by The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack and Home: Adventures with Tip & Oh creator Thurop Van Orman, co-directed by John Rice, and written by Peter Ackerman. John Cohen returned from The Angry Birds Movie to serve as producer, with animation again handled by Sony Pictures Imageworks.[5] Imageworks' sister studio Sony Pictures Animation also released the film under their banner, despite having dropped out of co-producing the project beforehand and had not co-produced the first film either.[6]
In the summer of 2017, production designer Pete Oswald stated that the sequel would be more of an adventure movie that introduces new characters and locations into the world first established in The Angry Birds Movie. While he was not in a position to offer further details about the plot and characters, which remained unknown until the months before the film's release, he expressed hope that it would be a better film than the first installment.[7]
The creative decision to break from the games' source material and have the birds and pigs end their conflict and form an alliance to face a greater threat was one that was made out of a desire to surprise audiences with a new experience with the same characters, as well as attempt to outdo what was accomplished in the first film with an unprecedented level of creative freedom available.[8] Josh Gad stated that the production team went forward with such idea because it was not only an "ingenious" one, but also because they felt it would feel most appropriate in light of the increasingly polarized political climate at the time, as people who disagree on significant issues struggle to find common ground.[9]
In April 2018, the majority of the voice cast was announced. Jason Sudeikis, Gad, Danny McBride, Maya Rudolph, Bill Hader, and Peter Dinklage will reprise their roles from the first film. Leslie Jones will voice a new female villain,[10][11] revealed to be Zeta in the teaser trailer.[12] In December 2018, Nicki Minaj joined the cast of the film.[13] Upon its release, the teaser trailer briefly revealed that Hal, a green boomerang bird from the games and the first film, would return in the sequel,[14] with Anthony Padilla returning to voice Hal.[15] The following day, producer John Cohen announced in a tweet that Awkwafina will voice Courtney, the first named female pig in the Angry Birds franchise that briefly appeared in the teaser.[16]
When the film's first full trailer was released on March 27, 2019, more details about the sequel's characters and their voice roles were revealed. Among several new characters confirmed to appear in the movie was Silver, a bird first introduced in the Angry Birds 2 game, voiced by Rachel Bloom, and Ella, voiced by Dove Cameron.[17] In June, People revealed the identity of the white bird living with Zeta in the teaser trailer as Debbie, voiced by Tiffany Haddish who was one of several voice actors not listed in the initial casting.[18] Later that month, the film's final trailer revealed that Terence, a large red bird from the first film, would appear without Sean Penn reprising his voice role, and Nolan North replacing Penn.[19]
Unlike the previous film, the sequel was co-produced with Rovio Animation and Sony Pictures Animation. While it was possible to reuse assets from the first film instead of starting from scratch, significant work was needed to make them compatible with new technological systems that were adopted in the past few years. The animators faced great challenges attempting to create more realistic feather systems for the Birds' plumage, even with the help of Sony Pictures Imageworks' existing feather system that was first used in Stuart Little (1999), especially when it came to designing the villain Zeta, the hardest character to animate in the film with over 1,000 controls, a very complex face structure and a tall, flexible torso. The team also faced a demanding task in designing visual effects for snow, ice, water and lava for the film and production was also affected by the unavailability of certain animators who were being used to complete Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) months prior, as well as the amount of time lost due to Sony moving the film's release date ahead by more than half a month.[20]
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