The world is counting on the highly famous super spy Lance Sterling to protect it from grave threats, who in turn often counts on the technical smarts of young scientist Walter Beckett to fashion great gadgets to accomplish his missions in spite of himself. However, when Beckett attempts to introduce his newest invention of "biodynamic concealment", Sterling accidentally ingests Beckett's experimental work and turns into a pigeon. He must now find out how he can save the world from a cybernetic madman while being such a small animal.
It was announced on October 9, 2017, that development was underway on a film based on the animated short Pigeon: Impossible, with Will Smith and Tom Holland lending their voices to the lead characters.
In October 2018, new additions to the voice cast included Ben Mendelsohn, Karen Gillan, Rashida Jones, DJ Khaled and Masi Oka. In July 2019, Reba McEntire and Rachel Brosnahan joined the cast. In September 2019, Carla Jimenez joined the cast.
Release
Theatrical run
The film was originally scheduled for release on January 18, 2019 by 20th Century Fox, but the release date was pushed back from its original release date of January 18, 2019 to April 19, 2019 and then from April 19, 2019 to September 13, 2019. On May 10, the release date got pushed back once more from September 13, 2019 to Christmas Day on December 25, 2019.
Marketing
The first trailer was released on November 1, 2018, the second was released on July 1, 2019 and the third was released on September 27, 2019.
This is the fifth Blue Sky Studios film not composed by John Powell after the original Ice Age (which was composed by David Newman), Epic (which was composed by Danny Elfman), The Peanuts Movie (which was composed by Christophe Beck), and Ice Age: Collision Course (which was composed by John Debney).
This is the first animated film from 20th Century Fox to be released after the Disney purchase.
Additionally, this is the first Blue Sky Studios film to be released after the Disney purchase.
The film's release date has been changed several times. It was originally set to come out on January 18, 2019, but was then pushed back to April 19, then moved to September 13, 2019. On May 10, the release got pushed back once more to Christmas Day 2019, to accommodate the release of Fox's Ad Astra which was moved to the September date.
This is Will Smith's first animated film role since DreamWorks' 2004 feature Shark Tale.
This is the sixth time Tom Holland uses an American accent for his role after Captain America: Civil War, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame, and Spider-Man: Far From Home (all of in which he played Spider-Man).
This is also his first time using an animated role, not counting the UK English dub of The Secret World of Arrietty (under the simple title Arrietty in that country).
