It was opening weekend for the Emoji movie, coming off of an highly visible marketing campaign leading up to its release. Because of that, even if you weren’t interested in seeing it, you no doubt knew it was coming out.
Part of that marketing campaign included a series of digital billboards running in major cities across the country. Just as we send emojis in texts and posts on social media to reflect our emotions, the digital billboard campaign used different emoji designs to react to the surroundings regarding weather and traffic conditions. Unfavorable emoji designs are displayed if traffic backs up or if was raining. The cats and dogs emojis, the devil, the “poop” or the “meh” emojis appeared for less than favorable conditions in traffic and weather. If traffic was flowing and the sun was shining, the emoji billboards reflected that with the smiley face or high five. The billboards were running through the weekend here in Atlanta, as well as in Chicago, Dallas, Phoenix, Boston, Seattle, and Orlando.
The movie was released on Friday and grossed around $25 million in its first weekend, despite less than stellar reviews. The total cost to make the movie was in the $50 million range. Some critics said that the movie was a waste of the incredible cast of voice talent, including Sofia Vergara, Sean Hayes, Maya Rudolph, Patrick Stewart, James Corden, Christina Aguilera, and Stephen Wright. Others associated with the movie say critic’s opinion doesn’t hit kids animated movies as hard as adult movies, because kids don’t pay as much attention to the tweets and reviews about movies geared toward them as adults do. That said, most of the time, we adults have to sit through the movies that our kids want to see, so the reviews may be more influential to movie goers than expected.