Rio, often promoted as Rio: The Movie, is a 2011 American 3D computer-animated musical comedy film produced by Blue Sky Studios and directed by Carlos Saldanha. The title refers to the Brazilian city of
Rio de Janeiro, in which the film is set. The film features the voices of Jesse Eisenberg, Anne Hathaway, George Lopez, Jemaine Clement and Jake T. Austin. The film tells the story of Blu (Eisenberg), a male blue macaw who is taken to Rio de Janeiro to mate with a female. He eventually falls in love with Jewel (Hathaway), a free-spirited macaw, and together they have to escape from being smuggled by Nigel (Clement), a cockatoo. Saldanha developed his first story concept of Rio in 1995, in which a penguin is washed up in Rio. However, Saldanha learned of the production of the films Happy Feet and Surf's Up, and changed the concept to involve macaws and their environments in Rio. This has led many to believe that the plot concept is in fact based on the 1992 book "Spix's Macaw: The Race To Save the World's Rarest Bird" by environmentalist Tony Jupiter. He proposed his idea to Chris Wedge in 2006, and the project was set up at Blue Sky.
Rio Trailer
