International
Rovio, SEGA & Prime Focus Studios announce The Angry Birds Movie 3
Mumbai: Rovio Entertainment Corporation, SEGA, and Namit Malhotra’s production company Prime Focus Studios, has announced that they are starting production on The Angry Birds Movie 3, with DNEG Animation attached as animation partner. Prime Focus Studios, Rovio, and SEGA will produce the movie in association with One Cool Group, Flywheel Media, and dentsu.
The third installment in the franchise will follow the continuing adventures of Red and Chuck, voiced once again by Jason Sudeikis (Ted Lasso, SNL, We’re the Millers) and Josh Gad (Frozen, Beauty and the Beast, Gutenberg!, Murder on the Orient Express). Jason Sudeikis is represented by Brillstein Entertainment Partners and TAG. Josh Gad is represented by Sugar 23, CAA and JSSK. More casting news will be coming soon.
The film follows the success of the first two Angry Birds movies, which together have grossed more than $500m at the worldwide box office and have demonstrated fantastic results on streaming platforms, signalling strong demand for the third installment.
The Angry Birds Movie 3 will be directed by John Rice (Angry Birds, Beavis and Butt-Head Do The Universe). The screenplay will be written by Thurop Van Orman (Angry Birds 2, Adventure Time, Flapjack), who will also executive produce alongside Toru Nakahara (Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic Prime, Golden Axe). The film will be produced by John Cohen (Despicable Me, The Garfield Movie, Angry Birds), Dan Chuba (The Mitchells vs. the Machines), and Carla Connor (The Willoughbys).
Returning to the Angry Birds design team is Jeanie Chang as production designer and Francesca Natale as character designer. The head of story is Vadim Bazhanov and the lead editor is Sarah K. Reimers. Storyboards, art development, and animation will be handled by DNEG Animation.
Rovio and SEGA will produce alongside Namit Malhotra and his production company Prime Focus Studios, which recently co-produced The Garfield Movie with Alcon Entertainment. Prime Focus Studios is also currently in production on Animal Friends with Legendary Entertainment and Ryan Reynolds’ Maximum Effort, and Indian epic Ramayana with actor-producer Yash’s Monster Mind Creations.
“The Angry Birds brand knows no bounds, and an all-new Angry Birds adventure underscores how the worlds and narratives crafted in our games can seamlessly transcend into the realm of film and beyond,” said Rovio Entertainment CEO Alexandre Pelletier-Normand. “Rovio is fully committed to creating entertainment that sparks imagination across various platforms. We’ve seen continuous success in everything from games and feature films to licensed products and amusement parks, and we are thrilled to return once again to the vibrant Angry Birds world with our new partners.”
“The Angry Birds games are a global phenomenon and the film franchise has enjoyed worldwide success,” added DNEG Animation MD Crosby Clyse. “Our amazing DNEG Animation team is thrilled to be teaming up once again with Prime Focus Studios and with our new friends at Rovio to create an all-new high-velocity adventure set in this colourful, crazy world.”
“Innovation is part of dentsu’s DNA and we are always looking for new and exciting projects to deliver differentiated, integrated growth opportunities for our clients. We believe in the positive impact of entertainment, creating meaningful connections between people and brands,” commented dentsu global president – global practices Jean Lin. “We are so proud to partner with Prime Focus Studios and DNEG Animation to help bring the next installment of the beloved global Angry Birds franchise to life.”
“The Angry Birds brand truly reflects the size and scale of content Flywheel Media are focusing on,” said Flywheel Media founder and CEO Don McGregor. “We are thrilled to be joining forces with such incredible partners to deliver this film to audiences around the world.”
The Angry Birds Movie opened at #1 in 50 countries on its release in 2016 and has grossed more than $350m at the worldwide box office. Rovio’s mobile games surpassed 5 billion downloads in 2022.
“We are thrilled to announce that the brand-new film of the globally beloved and successful Angry Birds franchise is to be in production,” said SEGA president and COO Shuji Utsumi. “SEGA has been focusing on its Transmedia strategy to advance the value of its intellectual properties (IP) across games and diverse media landscapes. We believe that the upcoming The Angry Birds Movie 3 perfectly aligns with our strategy and presents a great opportunity for us to bring the charm of the Angry Birds brand to fans across the globe.”
“I’m delighted to be partnering with Rovio, SEGA, One Cool, Flywheel, dentsu, and the incredible team of returning filmmakers and voice talent on this movie. It’s an honour to be part of the next chapter in the amazing Angry Birds story,” concluded producer Namit Malhotra. “Prime Focus Studios is in production on an impressive roster of high-profile features and I am excited that The Angry Birds Movie 3 will be the next big animated project on our slate after The Garfield Movie.”
Angry Birds and all related properties, titles, logos, and characters are trademarks of Rovio Entertainment Corporation and are used with permission. All Rights Reserved.
LOS ANGELES: Acting has never been an easy profession, but in recent years, it has acquired a new existential anxiety. Artificial intelligence can now mimic faces, clone voices and, in theory at least, speak any language it is fed. The fear that actors may soon be replaced by algorithms no longer belongs exclusively to science fiction. And yet, despite the rise of digital inauthenticity, some performers remain stubbornly resistant to replacement. The reason is not celebrity, nor even talent. It is language.
On paper, this should not be a problem. AI can translate. It can imitate accents. It can string together grammatically correct sentences in dozens of languages. But acting, inconveniently, is not about grammatical correctness. It is about meaning, and meaning is where AI still falters.
Machine translation offers a cautionary tale. Google Translate, now powered by neural AI, has improved markedly since its debut in 2006. It can manage menus, emails and airport signage with impressive efficiency. What it struggles with, however, are the moments that matter most: idioms, metaphors, irony, and cultural shorthand. Ask it to translate a joke, a threat disguised as politeness, or a line heavy with emotional subtext, and it begins to unravel. Acting lives precisely in those gaps.
This matters because film language is rarely literal. Scripts, particularly in independent cinema, rely on figurative speech and symbolism to convey what characters cannot say outright. Pedro Almodóvar’s Volver is a useful example. The film’s recurring use of red operates on multiple levels: grief, desire, repression, liberation, and memory. These meanings are inseparable from the Spanish cultural context and emotional cadence. A translation may convey the words, but not the weight they carry. An AI-generated performance might replicate the sound, but not the sense.
This is where multilingual actors gain their edge. Performers such as Penélope Cruz and Sofía Vergara do not simply switch between languages; they move between cultural logics. Their fluency allows them to inhabit characters without flattening them for international consumption. Language, for them, is not an accessory but a structuring force.
Beyond European cinema, this becomes even more pronounced. Languages such as Hindi, Arabic and Mandarin are spoken by hundreds of millions of people and underpin vast cinematic traditions. As global audiences grow more interconnected, the demand for authenticity increases rather than diminishes. Viewers can tell when a performance has been filtered through approximation. Subtle errors, misplaced emphasis, and an unnatural rhythm break the illusion.
There is also a practical dimension. Multilingualism expands opportunity. Sofía Vergara has spoken openly about how learning English enabled her to work beyond Colombia and access Hollywood roles. But this movement is not a one-way export of talent into English-speaking cinema. Multilingual actors carry stories, styles and sensibilities back with them, enriching multiple industries at once.
Cinema has always thrived on such hybridity. Denzel Washington’s performances, for instance, draw on the cultural realities of growing up African American in the United States, while also reflecting stylistic influences from classic Hollywood and Westerns. His work demonstrates how identity and influence intersect on screen. Multilingual actors extend this intersection further, embodying multiple cultural frameworks simultaneously.
At times, linguistic authenticity is not merely artistic but ethical. Films that confront historical trauma, such as Schindler’s List, rely on language to anchor their moral seriousness. When Jewish actors perform in German, the choice is not incidental. Language becomes a site of memory and confrontation. It is difficult to imagine an automated voice carrying that responsibility without hollowing it out.
This is why claims that AI heralds the death of language miss the point. Language is not just a delivery system for information. It is a repository of history, humour, power and pain. Fluency is not only about knowing what to say, but when to hesitate, when to understate, and when to let silence do the work. These are not technical problems waiting to be solved; they are human instincts shaped by lived experience.
AI may one day improve its grasp of metaphor and nuance. It may even learn to sound convincing. But acting is not about sounding convincing; it is about being convincing. Until algorithms can acquire memory, cultural inheritance and emotional intuition, multilingual actors will remain irreplaceable. AI may learn to speak. But it cannot yet learn to mean.
In an industry increasingly tempted by shortcuts, language remains stubbornly resistant to automation. And for actors who can move between worlds, linguistic, cultural, and emotional, that resistance is not a weakness, but a quiet, enduring advantage.
