Spotify Reportedly Signs Up For Sony's Questionable Emoji Movie

At this week's Sony CinemaCon presentation in Las Vegas, Sony Pictures Animation president Kristine Belson unveiled more details about The Emoji Movie, with music-streaming behemoth Spotify reportedly signed on as one of the first apps to feature in the film.

The Emoji Movie is set inside a smartphone and, according to The Wrap, will feature Spotify as one of several real-world-brand apps visited by the pictorial protagonists during their adventure. Other sign-ups are yet to be confirmed, though The Wrap reports Facebook was among the logos included for real digital brands in concept art for the film.

"Inside your phone, there's a secret world — and we enter through the text app where we discover Emoji Valley, where the industrious Emoji live and work," Belson said at CinemaCon.

Eventually, The Wrap reports, the Emoji make it to the home screen, where they find the apps there — including, presumably, Spotify — are able to transport them to individual worlds within, like digital versions of the paintings in Super Mario 64. The mini-universes will feature hallmarks of their relevant app, with concepts mentioned including having the characters navigate a boat on a literal stream to represent music streaming.

There's no real indication on what the narrative will entail beyond being a feature-length opportunity to plug some of the world's already-most ubiquitous companies, and with another brand-heavy bomb already recently off the production line in the form of Adam Sandler's Pixels, it's hard to get our hopes up too high about the end potential of this movie, which is due out in theatres in 2017.

On the other hand, this also sounds somewhat in the same vein as Pixar's Wreck-it Ralph, which was an unarguable gift to animated cinema, so it's probably too early to make any sweeping judgment just yet.

You can't blame us for being suspicious, though.