The teaser trailer for Blue Sky Studio‘s “Rio 2” has just hit the Internet and the brief clip doesn’t explain much, instead encouraging you to shake your tail feathers while you’ll undoubtedly wonder, at least for the first thirty seconds or so, if you’re watching a commercial for a feature-length version of the “Angry Birds” iPhone game. (Spoiler alert: you’re not, but Sony have just announced that a 3D “Angry Birds” movie is hitting on July 1st, 2016. To quote one Playlist staff member, way to strike when the iron’s hot, Sony).
The sequel to the bafflingly popular, exceptionally colorful 2011 animated feature “Rio,” finds neurotic parrot Blu (Jesse Eisenberg) and his wife Jewel (Anne Hathaway) living with their three children in Rio de Janeiro. Instead of evading kidnappers or dealing with life in the favela, they instead are dealing with their children becoming “city birds,” so they decide to travel deep into the Amazon. Scary! A number of cast members from the original film, including will.i.am, Jamie Foxx, George Lopez, Jermaine Clement, and Tracy Morgan are scheduled to return, along with new cast members Andy Garcia, Kristin Chenoweth, Natalie Morales, and pop stars Bruno Mars and Janelle Monae.
Not that any of this information about the plot is conveyed by the brief teaser, which mostly consists of dancing and Clement’s villainous parrot making some comment about poop. It’s what the kids want, apparently.
“Rio 2” will be, once again, directed by Brazilian filmmaker Carlos Saldanha, a longtime Blue Sky employee who co-directed “Ice Age” and “Robots” and directed “Ice Age: The Meltdown,” “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” and the original “Rio.” It will be released (by Blue Sky’s parent company Fox) on April 11th, 2014.