Canadian ‘Angry Birds’ producer says film ‘earned its place on the big screen’

By Cassandra Szklarski, The Canadian Press

TORONTO – The Canadian producer behind “The Angry Birds Movie” understands there might be skepticism surrounding the app-inspired feature.

It sprung from a hit mobile game that revolves around birds being flung into structures erected by pigs, who have stolen their eggs. There’s not much more to it than that.

But Toronto-born Catherine Winder says the app’s thin plot actually gave the filmmakers a wide berth in writing a script, allowing for a fresh mythology around established characters.

“This is first and foremost a story and movie that has earned its place on the big screen,” says Winder, who previously served as president of Rainmaker Entertainment and worked at Lucasfilm Animation, where she developed and produced TV’s “Star Wars: The Clone Wars.”

“This isn’t a movie about a game but rather, we’ve had awesome characters from which to pull and springboard and tell a story around and about.”

And so “The Angry Birds Movie,” opening Friday, introduces audiences to an island mostly populated by happy, flightless birds.

The sole exceptions are the anger-prone Red, the yellow-feathered Chuck and Bomb (voiced by Jason Sudeikis, Josh Gad and Danny McBride, respectively), whose volatile emotions are riled by the arrival of mysterious green pigs. The story largely unfolds through the eyes of Red, who “sees things differently.”

“When these pigs come to town, he questions things in a way that the (other) birds don’t,” says Winder. “At first, they don’t listen to him and you can imagine what happens.”

During a recent visit to Toronto, Winder shared her thoughts on the timing of the film, its messages, and Canadian connections.

On the waning popularity of the game:

“As in every property, it ebbs and flows, but this game has been downloaded over three billion times. It has 150 million active monthly users, so while yes it might not be at the original numbers, it’s still extraordinarily popular around the world and the characters are known and beloved.

“Ninety-one per cent of the world has pre-awareness of ‘Angry Birds,’ which is incredible. If you think about it, it’s only a six, seven-year-old property and to have that recognition (is incredible). So while you may think that yes, the movie should have been made at the height of its popularity, I’d argue that you make a movie at a time when you’ve got the right story to tell — and we have that story.”

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On the film’s themes:

“There is staying true to yourself, there’s also a theme around it’s OK to be different. Red is different. He’s set apart in this town, in this world, where everybody is naively optimistic all the time and doesn’t question anything. And he does and he’s kind of an outsider and he looks at things differently. And ultimately the fact that he looks at it differently and questions things is valuable.

“And the other birds come to see that and look to him for leadership because he is different. The other message and theme is around learning to channel your emotions, your anger, in a way that actually is a positive.”

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On working in Vancouver:

“I moved to Vancouver a little over six years ago, at which time very few feature films had been done (there) … and when we were looking at ‘Angry Birds’ and trying to figure out where to best cast it, of course we had to comb the world … and it was Vancouver with the best animators and comedic talent.

“But at that time Sony Pictures Imageworks only had a small piece of the workflow being done in Vancouver and so I pushed to do the whole thing there. And ultimately they ended up moving their operations there at the same time as we were doing the film and it’s been great for Vancouver…. Now (animation studio) Animal Logic, through Warner Bros., is set up in Vancouver to do all the Lego movies and Imageworks has more and more full animated projects that are going through there, not just from their Sony Pictures animation group, but other groups as well.”

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