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How The Guys Behind 'Angry Birds' Made The Next 'Lego Movie' And Not Another 'Super Mario Bros.' Flop

This article is more than 7 years old.

Clay Kaytis first became obsessed with Angry Birds while working as head of animation for Disney's Tangled. 

"I played the game a lot," he said at a press event in Los Angeles. "It was my decompression at night. My wife was like, 'You have a problem.'"

He wasn't alone. Angry Birds first hit the iOS app store in 2009. When the sequel, Angry Birds 2, was released in 2015, the original had been downloaded more than 3 billion times. It seemed inevitable that a movie was coming.

These birds are about to get angry! (Credit: Angry Birds/Rovio Entertainment)

Rovio decided to produce and finance the entire film, which hits theaters on Friday. The company pegged Kaytis and veteran storyboard artist Fergal Reilly as the movie's directors, a first for both of them.

Seeing as the game consists mostly of slingshotting birds at green pigs, they weren't immediately sold on the idea.

"Like anybody, we were a little skeptical,"Reilly told me in an interview.

After all, there is a long history of studios making terrible movies based on video games, with Super Mario Bros. at the top of the flagpole. (Seriously, take a look at these goombas). So what sold the duo?

They liked the script and the freedom given to them by Rovio Animation, which Kaytis joined after 19 years at Disney. They tried to steer clear of the problems that have plagued other video game movie productions.

"People try to be too literal with a game," Kaytis told me. "And I think people try to fit video games into an action movie mold and maybe that's not always the best way to do it."

Angry Birds is definitely a comedy. It stars the voices of Saturday Night Live alums Jason Sudeikis, Bill Hader and Maya Rudolph, as well as Peter Dinklage, Josh Gad and Danny McBride. Also, Sean Penn for some reason. While it certainly has action, it's obviously shooting for laughs first.

Both directors have a love for video games. Kaytis has fond memories of playing Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy VIIReilly was more of a GoldenEye guy, playing "epic games" with his roommate while working on Iron Giant. 

Complicated games, they said, can actually present more of a challenge to filmmakers. In the new Assassin's Creed movie, due out in December, fans will be paying attention to how the movie portrays the detailed worlds and characters they have grown to love. With Angry Birds ... not so much.

"It was freeing to have such a basic premise," Reilly said. 

Kaytis agreed. Both, however, had some basic questions for Rovio. 

"I asked if they had arms and legs, because they don’t in the game," Kaytis said. "I was fully prepared to do a bouncing ball movie. But they were like, 'No, no, they can walk.'"

In case you were wondering, yes, there are pigs, boomeranging birds, falling structures and a slingshot in the movie. But a lot of it is funny looking creatures making jokes.

The filmmakers tried to create personality attributes centered around each bird's ability in the game; for example, Bomb, the exploding bird, suffers from a very literal and cartoonish version of intermittent explosive disorder. With very few demands centered around plot, they were free to focus on making each bird as interesting and funny as possible.

"If you don’t care about characters," Reilly said, "nobody is going to care about the movie."