You may or may not have known that yesterday, July 17, was World Emoji Day. It seems thatSilicon ValleystarT.J. Millerspent this day auditioning for a number of differentEmojicharacters in Sony Pictures Animation’sEmojiMovie: Express Yourself, as you can see in a new video. After a lengthy audition process,T.J. Millerlanded the role of Gene.
While we don’t know much about Gene, Sony Pictures Animation revealed onYouTubethat he auditioned for “every emoji” before landing the voice of this main character.EmojiMovie: Express Yourselfwill offer a surprising and comic take on the secret world of our phones and the beloved characters that have become daily necessities in global interpersonal communication. The feature, targeting an August 2017theatrical release, is directed byAnthony Leondis, produced byMichelle Raimo Kouyate, and written byAnthony Leondis&Eric Siegel.
We first reported on this project almost exactly one year ago, when Sony Pictures Animation acquired a pitch fromAnthony Leondisthat used storyboards to explain how theanimated moviewill unfold. Emoji characters are in the public domain, and our report from last year revealed that another project is in the works involving emoji, but we don’t have any details on that project quite yet. The movie will go up against Warner Bros.‘CHiPsremake and Focus Features’The Coldest Cityon August 09, 2025.
Emoji icons were first created byShigetaka Kuritain Japan during the late 1990s, while he was working on NTT DoCoMo’s team that was creating an i-mode mobile Internet platform. TheEmoji, which literally means “picture (e) + character (moji)” in Japanese, were used to help set the platform apart from its competitors, and while they originated in Japan, they began to spread worldwide in the 2000s. Last year, the 20th Century Fox comedyThe Other Womanlaunched the first everEmoji trailer. DuringStar Wars Celebrationlast April, fans who tweeted by using certain hashtags received their ownStar Wars: The Force AwakensEmoji.
T.J. Millerbecomes the firstvoice castmember to sign on forEmojiMovie: Express Yourself, so we’ll have to wait and see who else rounds out the cast. It isn’t known if the filmmakers have already started work on the animation, or whenT.J. Millerwill start recording his lines. While we wait for more updates onEmojiMovie: Express Yourself, check out this new video featuringT.J. Miller’s emoji auditions.
