---
name: "Tony Leondis"
canonical: "https://film.one/person/tony-leondis"
roles: ["Director","Screenwriter","Writer"]
born: "24 March 1972"
reviewed_on_fi1m: 1
updated: "2026-09-16T15:23:39.050853+00:00"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Tony Leondis

Director and screenwriter. Born 24 March 1972 in New York City, New York, USA.

## Details

- **Work:** Director, Screenwriter, Writer
- **Born:** 24 March 1972, New York City, New York, USA
- **Also known as:** توني ليوندس, Anthony Leondis, Toni Leondis

## Fi1m on Tony Leondis

> Tony Leondis has a sympathetic interest in animated outsiders, but his emoji film makes a poor case for his storytelling. A promising setting becomes a tour of apps, with thin characters asked to carry a lesson about self-acceptance.

In Leondis's 2017 emoji film, Gene struggles to fit in, an apt difficulty for a character whose job is to express a feeling. Leondis has found a setting that could support jokes about the gap between what people mean and what a tiny face manages to say. We were bored by the journeys between apps because Gene remained too thin a character to make us care where he went. The bright animation and occasional slapstick offer small pleasures, but the film is too short of jokes to recommend.

Leondis's directing debut was *Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch* (2005), followed by his first theatrical feature, *Igor* (2008). He also directed the short *Kung Fu Panda: Secrets of the Masters* (2011), before pitching and directing the emoji film. He has worked with established characters and proposed new ones, but his recurring interest is in outsiders learning to accept themselves. That is a sympathetic concern, and Gene's difficulty gives it a suitable starting point.

In that film, the screenplay he wrote with Eric Siegel and Mike White gives Gene a familiar self-acceptance story without finding much that belongs specifically to an emoji. Almost any talking object could deliver the same advice, and the muddled rules inside the phone make the journey harder to follow than it should be. The dialogue keeps explaining familiar points while leaving its central character underwritten. Leondis's direction does not find enough comic business to compensate. The premise needed closer attention to how these little symbols work, not simply more places for them to visit.

Leondis drew inspiration for the emoji concept from *Toy Story*, looking for familiar objects that might sustain an animated story. There is nothing wrong with that starting point. But the app visits feel too much like advertising, and the film does too little with the ways people actually use emojis to communicate. We would approach another Leondis film cautiously. A clever premise would not be enough to persuade us.

## Biography

Tony Leondis is an American former animator, storyboard artist, filmmaker and voice actor. He attended CalArts and began his career as a story artist after an internship arranged by professor Brenda Chapman on the 1998 film *The Prince of Egypt*, later working on titles including *The Lion King II: Simba's Pride* (1998) and *Home on the Range* (2004).

Leondis made his directorial debut with the 2005 direct-to-video film *Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch*, which he also co-wrote. He went on to direct *Igor* (2008), the short *Kung Fu Panda: Secrets of the Masters* (2011) and *The Emoji Movie* (2017), for which he also received story and screenplay credits. He voiced characters in several of his projects.

Leondis won two Golden Raspberry Awards for *The Emoji Movie*.

*Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com.*

## On Fi1m (1)

- *The Emoji Movie* (2017), Fi1m 27, Director, Screenplay, Story — [page](https://film.one/film/the-emoji-movie.md)

## Also known for

- *Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch* (2005), Director, Writer
- *Kronk's New Groove* (2005), Story
- *Igor* (2008), Director, Screenplay
- *Kung Fu Panda: Secrets of the Masters* (2011), Director

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© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/tony-leondis