After speculation hovering in the air for years now, Rovio announced on Tuesday, Feb. 26 that its highly successful app Angry Birds will officially become the source of a new animated series. Angry Birds Toons will premiere March 16, 2013.
As it stands, the series will only be shown on the Angry Birds website.
On Feb. 5, 2013 the Wall Street Journal reported that Rovio Entertainment Ltd.'s chief executive, Michael Hed, said the Finnish company would be releasing "a new series of short, animated episodes this spring based on the company's popular 'Angry Birds' videogame characters, tapping Rovio's growing knowledge of content distribution across several types of devices."
Hed continued in the interview that Rovio would be experimenting with various distribution methods for the series.
"Previously content creators were reliant on others who had the channel," said Hed. "The content [Angry Birds] itself is the channel. We have become the channel."
Hed may have a point, as TechCrunch discusses. With 260 million users logged as of January, 2013, Angry Birds remains one of the most popular apps and games in history and has been filtered into countries across the globe, as well as via platforms ranging from iOS to Android to Kindle Fire, Mac, Windows 8 and Windows Phone.
TechCrunch goes on to note that with so much popularity garnered for Angry Birds on Rovio's own, partnering with a broadcast network would only decrease profits for a company that can clearly get consumers interested without the help of major studios.
Rovio's move toward creating an Angry Birds animated series was spurred on by its acquiring of partner and Finnish animation studio Kombo in 2011.
The purchase of Kombo allowed Rovio to strengthen its in-house animation capabilities and since then, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, Rovio's in-house animation team has tripled, to 70 people.
More information, trailers and animation samples for the Angry Birds show can be seen here. Information also appears about a Bad Piggies show.
Rumors are already aswirl about an Angry Birds feature film, with a mention on IMDb.com of such a film being slated for 2016.
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