California – Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) announced that it has won the exclusive worldwide distribution rights to the Angry Birds animated film. The 3D film is being developed, produced, and financed by Rovio Entertainment and will be released worldwide by Sony Pictures on July 1, 2016.  John Cohen and David Maisel – producer of Despicable Me and executive producer of Iron Man, respectively – are both on board for the new Angry Birds feature film. Cohen will serve as producer with Maisel to executive produce.

Angry Birds is one of the world’s biggest entertainment franchises, starting in 2009 with the original mobile game that remains the number one paid app of all time. Angry Birds has expanded rapidly into entertainment, publishing, and licensing. To date, the Angry Birds and Bad Piggies games have been downloaded more than 1.7 billion times across platforms and versions.

David Maisel and John Cohen said, “We are very excited to join with Sony Pictures in presenting this movie to the world in 2016 and we will have many more announcements as we begin production in the coming months.”