The Secret Life of Pets is only five months out from its July release, but Illumination Entertainment would also like you to know that another one of its movies is coming out in 2016 as well.

This week, Illumination Entertainment stealthily dropped the first teaser trailer for its animated musical Sing. You can watch it below:

Sing will mark something of a creative departure from previous Illumination entries. Garth Jennings will make his feature animation debut with this film as both director and screenwriter, where previous films have been steered mostly by Illumination’s usual in-house team of writers and directors. Garth will also take his creative footprint one step further by working with his frequent collaborator Joby Talbolt on the score.

Putting aside Illumination’s impeccable marketing skills, this technically makes Sing the riskier bet of Illumination’s 2016 features, as that movie will neither have the Despicable Me branding or the franchise’s creative consortium at the wheel to offset the film’s quirky setup.

That being said, what I’ve seen thus far has me more excited for Sing than The Secret Life of Pets. Despite relying on two of the most well-trod plot devices in animation (all-animal world + musical), the humor is much more effective here than with Pets, especially since the plot of the film (as viewed in the teaser) pretty much amounts to ‘American Idol with animals’.

That also brings me to another tricky high-wire performance that the film will have to manage: the jukebox musical. Illumination Entertainment has made it a virtual selling point that the film will contain 85 pop songs from across music history. While the ‘American Idol with animals’ concept makes sense in this regard, the challenge will be to marry that premise with the plot and the visual humor (which we saw a little bit).

There aren’t very many examples of jukebox musicals in feature animation, but when it’s done right, we got Happy Feet. When it’s not done right, we got Strange Magic. Hopefully the end result of Sing will be the former.

The film stars Matthew McConaughey, Reese Witherspoon, Seth McFarlane, Tori Kelly, and John C. Reily, with Taron Edgarton, and Scarlet Johansson. Sing will bow in theaters on December 21, 2016.

What do you think? Any thoughts on the teaser trailer for Sing?

Edited by: Kelly Conley