Angry Birds Movie 2: Birds And Pigs Unite In New Trailer

The Angry Birds are going to need a little help from their frenemies.

Sony Pictures Animation has dropped the first trailer for The Angry Birds Movie 2, the sequel to the hit mobile game adaptation. This time around, the denizens of Bird Island will have to unite with their traditional enemies, the pigs, to deal with an ice-cold common foe. The spot was posted this morning on Sony Pictures Entertainment's YouTube channel.

Let's just get this out of the way: although The Angry Birds Movie was greeted with a healthy amount of skepticism when it was released in 2016, it ended up being pretty darn entertaining, much more so than any flick based on a mobile app had any right to be. While it didn't exactly set the critics' heads on fire, it did rake in over $350 million dollars at the worldwide box office, making another installment a foregone conclusion.

Fortunately, the trailer promises more of the sweet-natured, goofy humor that made the first movie a surprise hit — and not only is a substantial portion of that flick's stellar voice cast back for round two, but some interesting new names have also jumped on board. Returning from the first installment are Jason Sudeikis (The Last Man on Earth), Josh Gad (Beauty and the Beast), Bill Hader (Barry), Danny McBride (Alien: Covenant), and Peter Dinklage (Game of Thrones). Joining the cast are Awkwafina (Crazy Rich Asians), Dove Cameron (Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), Sterling K. Brown (Black Panther), Rachel Bloom (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend), Zach Woods (Silicon Valley), Lil Rel Howery (Get Out), Brooklynn Prince (The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part), and Leslie Jones (Ghostbusters). 

The spot opens with the narration of Red (Sudeikis) informing us that the rivalry between the birds and the pigs is just as heated as ever, illustrated by a pair of pranks (one involving bottles of hot sauce used as projectiles, and another having to do with a massive airdrop of marauding crabs). "I guess birds and pigs will always be enemies," he says — but then, an unexpected visitor shows up at his door. It's Leonard the pig (Hader), who brings news of a third island populated by eagles who threaten birdkind and pigkind alike. 

This leads to a secret meeting ostensibly attended by the leading minds from both islands ("Each of you has been selected because you're the best in your field... that we could find," Leonard says), which goes about as well as you would expect. But the eagles have apparently developed some kind of freeze ray, as discovered by a joint bird-pig expedition to their icy island (which also goes about as well as you'd expect), and it'll be up to an intrepid band of enemies-turned-allies to infiltrate the eagles' lair and put a stop to their nefarious plan. 

The Angry Birds Movie 2 has been slotted for an August 16 release, where it will face a bit of competition for the family audience. Also opening that weekend is Playmobil: The Movie, an animated flick inspired by the venerable toy line, which has also managed to assemble a killer voice cast. It features Anya Taylor-Joy (Split, Glass), Daniel Radcliffe (star of the Harry Potter series), Kenan Thompson (Wonder Park), comedian Jim Gaffigan (Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation), and Gabriel Bateman (who will star as Andy in the upcoming Child's Play reboot). The movie will also feature the talents of pop artists Adam Lambert and Meghan Trainor, and will be the feature directorial debut of Lino DeSalvo, who headed up the animation team on the 2013 Disney classic Frozen.

We'll see if lightning can strike twice for the Angry Birds film franchise (a phrase you never would have gotten us to believe we'd be bandying about just a few years ago), which just might turn out to be another cash cow for Sony's animation house. The imprint has done quite well for itself with the Hotel Transylvania series, and just picked up its first Best Animated Feature Oscar — not to mention boatloads of cash and an immense mountain of goodwill — with last year's smash Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Of course, it's also responsible for The Emoji Movie, but we suppose we can let that slide.