For a year that doesn't feature a single Despicable Me or Minions film, 2016 is turning out to be pretty big for Illumination Entertainment. Soon they'll try to win over pet lovers with their animated The Secret Life of Pets, and this holiday season they've got Sing, which stars Matthew McConaughey as an enterprising koala bear.
McConaughey lends his voice to the film along with Reese Witherspoon, Seth MacFarlane, Scarlett Johansson, John C. Reilly, Taron Egerton, Tori Kelly, Nick Kroll, Jennifer Saunders, Peter Serafinowicz, Leslie Jones, Jay Pharoah, Nick Offerman, and Beck Bennett. Written and directed by Garth Jennings (Son of Rambow), the animated musical comedy takes place in a world of talking animals, some of whom are entered into an animal singing competition. The film includes more than 85 songs, which is pretty incredible. Are we sure John Carney didn't secretly direct this?
Here's the official synopsis:
Set in a world like ours but entirely inhabited by animals, Sing stars Buster Moon (Academy Award® winner Matthew McConaughey), a dapper Koala who presides over a once-grand theater that has fallen on hard times. Buster is an eternal optimist — okay, maybe a bit of a scoundrel — who loves his theater above all and will do anything to preserve it. Now facing the crumbling of his life’s ambition, he has one final chance to restore his fading jewel to its former glory by producing the world’s greatest singing competition.
Five lead contestants emerge: A mouse (Seth MacFarlane) who croons as smoothly as he cons, a timid teenage elephant (Tori Kelly) with an enormous case of stage fright, an overtaxed mother (Academy Award® winner Reese Witherspoon) run ragged tending a litter of 25 piglets, a young gangster gorilla (Taron Egerton) looking to break free of his family’s felonies, and a punk-rock porcupine (Scarlett Johansson) struggling to shed her arrogant boyfriend and go solo. Each animal arrives under Buster’s marquee believing that this is their shot to change the course of their life.
Sing opens on December 21st.
