While anthropomorphic animals have always been a staple of animation, feature films have always tended to rely on more human characters. However, this seems to be the year that animals take over the big screen. Disney is about to hit with Zootopia where animals solve crimes. Now, the studio behind Despicable Me is going to give us animals singing pop music. Check out the trailer for Illumination’s new movie, simply titled Sing.
In Sing, Matthew McConaughey voices a koala bear named Buster Moon who has a theater he is desperately trying to keep from closing. His last ditch effort is a singing competition. Whether by intent, or accident, the entire town becomes aware of the contest, which leads to dreams of stardom for people, er, animals all over town. The movie boasts an all-star cast including Reese Witherspoon as the overworked mother of a massive litter of piglets, Taron Egerton as a gangster gorilla, and Scarlett Johansson as a punk porcupine. It's clear from the trailer that the movie will be chock full of characters and pop songs, so you’re likely to find something that you like in Sing.
While the world is populated by animals, they apparently listen to all the same music that we do in the real world, as the trailer is full of numerous songs that audiences will be familiar with. From Lady Gaga to Sir Mix A Lot to Seal , whose song is, ironically, performed by a sheep, the movie looks to be resting much of its success on fans interest in seeing their favorite tunes performed by animals. If nothing else Sing is setting itself up to have one hell of a soundtrack album.
Sing looks to be taking as much of its inspiration from reality TV singing competitions as much as anything else. It honestly feels like the movie is as much an animated version of American Idol as anything else. While we do so some of the story inside this trailer, so it won’t be simply singing scenes, the movie is boasting more than 85 hit songs will appear which is a lot of music. While most of the songs will likely only see the briefest of screen time that is still a huge amount of music to fit in.
This will be Illumination’s second feature film this year, following on The Secret Life of Pets that will be out this summer. Between that and the aforementioned Zootopia we’re certainly going to have a lot of talking animals this summer. Does one of these interest you more than any other? Let us know in the comments below.
Sing arrives in theaters December 21, 2016.
