The Angry Birds anarchy has taken its final step toward total Web domination. Having smashed their way through walls, machinery, space, Star Wars, and whatever else separated the mobile game-cum-pop-culture-phenomenon from our hearts, Rovio’s Angry Birds will get its own animated series this March.
The weekly series will debut on Rovio’s website – via the special “Angry Birds Toons” portal – on March 16, offering “an all-new animated series that throws the doors to Piggy Island wide open,” says the developer’s blog. Rovio also said the cartoons will answer popular, curious questions like “What makes Bomb Bird so angry?” “Why is the King Pig the King Pig?” “Are those mischievous piggies ever going to get hold of the eggs?”
On a sidenote, perhaps I’m missing some finer detail, but I always thought that the point of the games was that the michievous piggies already had the eggs. That’s why the birds were not only so angry in the first place, but also willing to throw themselves against structures even if it meant potential death via mysterious implosion. If there’s something in the larger mythology of the franchise that explains this misconception, maybe I – along with others who have always understood it this way – should starting watching the toons.
The animated series is just the latest milestone in the seemingly unstoppable growth of the Angry Birds cultural empire, although not the first time that the game has been turned into a cartoon. In 2011, Angry Birds was adapted into a one-off holiday special, “Angry Birds: Wreck The Halls,” that debuted on kids’ cable channel Nickelodeon. The channel went on to screen an animated prequel to the then-upcoming Angry Birds: Space game the following year.
The new series, reportedly made up of 52 three-minute short episodes, is the product of Finnish animation studio Kombo, a company Rovio bought out back in 2011. The project was announced back in April 2012 by Rovio’s head of animation Nick Dorra during an appearance in Cannes, France, with an expected launch date of late 2012. At the time, Dorra suggested that the animated series was part of a Rovio’s push to broaden the appeal of the franchise beyond gamers.
“Angry Birds is not just about the gameplay, and will be in the future less and less about the slingshot, actually, and more and more about the characters,” he said. The animated series, Dorra promised, would be “about telling more engaging stories [than the game could allow and exploring] deeper thoughts, deeper feelings of the characters, such as why are they always angry?”
Although the new series will initially be available online only, at least one television channel has expressed interest in the show; Rovio confirmed that a Ukrainian broadcaster will begin transmission of the entire series next month.
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