Angry Birds Sequel Officially Announced

The Angry Birds Movie is going to fly back into theaters with a sequel that will probably include birds being launched out of a catapult and mean pigs being destroyed by them. Rovio Entertainment announced the sequel Wednesday morning via the WSJ, coming off the first film’s profitable success this year. So far, the only official statement from Rovio Chief Executive Kati Levoranta is the simple, “We have started planning the sequel.”

The Angry Birds Movie had a $346.9 million box office haul worldwide, with $107.5 million in the US on a $73 million budget. Of course, that last number, as always, does not include the marketing budget (typically about 50-66% of the production budget). That makes the film a moderate success, but on an animated film (where assets can be reused for a sequel), it hit the second movie threshold fairly easily. That success added onto Rovio’s existing profit from their videogame empire, where they earned $86 million in the first half of 2016.

The films, Rovio hopes, will boost the company, whose revenue declined for the last three years after being unable to match the success of Angry Birds when it first hit in 2011, becoming the ubiquitous mobile game; you could scarcely find a phone or tablet that didn’t have at least one version of Angry Birds on it for the last five years.

If you didn’t see the first Angry Birds Movie in theaters, it’s available now in North America on Blu-ray/DVD and Digital HD; months before it even finishes its worldwide cinematic release, which ends after its release in Japan in October 2016.