An ordinary family battles a robot uprising in first look at Sony Animation's Connected

Every family road trip, no matter how meticulously mapped out, will face at least one unforeseen crisis. Maybe it’s a blown tire on a little-traveled back road. Maybe it’s a beloved stuffed animal left at a rest stop, 150 miles back. And maybe it’s a global tech uprising, where the world’s electronic devices gain sentience and join forces in an attempt to exterminate all humanity.

Such is the premise of Connected, Sony’s upcoming animated film from director Mike Rianda and producers Phil Lord and Chris Miller. EW has an exclusive first look at the adventure comedy (in theaters Sept. 18), which marries the banality of a family road trip — the cramped car, the stops at Waffle House — with the action-movie shenanigans of the robot apocalypse.

Broad City alum Abbi Jacobson voices Katie Mitchell, an artsy aspiring film nerd who’s just been accepted to her dream college. Katie’s eager to start a new chapter — alone — but her nature-loving dad Rick (voiced by Danny McBride) decides that driving Katie to college is the perfect opportunity to bond as a family and maybe put down the screens for a few days. And so Katie, Rick, mom Linda (Maya Rudolph), little brother Aaron (Rianda), and the pudgy family pug Monchi hit the road — only for their journey to be derailed by international tech problems, as phones and even household appliances turn deadly.

Some of the state-of-the-art animation technology developed for Spider-Verse has been used and built on to create Connected, particularly to experiment with different art models. The grittier human world is rendered in a messier, more hand-drawn style, while the robots are all CG shine and chrome.