Trivia / Rio

• All-Star Cast: The Five-Man Band, for a start, are played by Jesse Eisenberg, Anne Hathaway, George Lopez, Jamie Foxx and will.i.am. Outside of the Five-Man Band, there is also Jemaine Clement, Leslie Mann and Carlos Ponce.
• Billing Displacement: Despite Jesse Eisenberg voicing Blu, the film's protagonist, Anne Hathaway is first credited. Same goes with the sequel.
• The Cast Showoff: Recording artist will.i.am and part-time singer Jamie Foxx getting singing bits may be obligatory (as is doing the same to Bruno Mars and Kristin Chenoweth in the sequel), but Anne Hathaway?
• Celebrity Voice Actor: The Rap duo Madcon is doing the voices of Nico and Pedro in the Norwegian dub.
• Directed by Cast Member: The Brazilian Portuguese dub was directed by Guilherme Briggs, who voiced Nigel.
• Dueling Movies:
  • If you want a 2011 film with birds associated with music, just check Happy Feet Two.
  • Pixar, on the other hand, unknowingly averted this; it is commonly assumed that they backed out of making Newt (which would've been a similar story line involving newts instead) because of this film's existence, but in reality it was scrapped because the team decided to make Inside Out instead.
  • A minor one with Fast Five due to both films being set in Brazil, released in the same month, and Fast Five was dubbed as Fast and Furious 5: Rio Heist in some markets.
• Multiple Languages, Same Voice Actor: Rodrigo Santoro voiced Tulio in English and Brazilian Portuguese.
• Pet Fad Starter: Fortunately averted. When the movie came out, there were serious concerns that the film would lead to an increased demand for parrots, which would've been particularly bad since parrots are extremely high-maintenance animals that need constant attention and lots of patience, not to mention they often live for several decades. Thankfully, that never came to pass, though likely for cost reasons; parrots are expensive and run from several hundred to a few thousand dollars. Not exactly an impulse buy, especially for a first-time bird owner.
• Typecasting: Guilherme Briggs, the Brazilian voice of Nigel, had also voiced another Blue Sky villain: Phineas T. Ratchet (in Brazil Dom Aço, literally "Don Steel") from Robots. Of course, he doesn't always voice villains: he's voiced Freakazoid!, Superman and Coop, but one who knows his work really cannot deny that he shines real bright as a villain (hence the parallel with Norio Wakamoto), particularly Card Carrying ones that enable his Large Ham to go loose.
• What Could Have Been: Saldanha first had the idea for the film in 1995, involving a penguin being washed up on the beaches of Ipanema, It was changed to the current story after he learned of other films involving penguins being produced with greater results.
  • Neil Patrick Harris was originally set to voice Blu however had other commitments outside production where eventually Jesse Eisenberg was instead cast.
  • Earlier concept art had Blu be more accurate to the Spix's Macaws plumage colors.
  • Another unused concept for Nigel was at one point a palm cockatoo before being changed to sulphur-crested cockatoo and had a metallic claw on his left foot.
  • Linda was originally an older lady named Mrs. Park.
  • Scrapped characters was Linda's aunt named Alice Tipabody and her cat Clyde who would've appeared when Tulio comes across Linda and Blu (Though Clyde's model was used for the street cat Blu scares off to distract the smugglers after him and Jewel), Mayor Sampedro who would've appeared as Linda and Blu arrived in Rio, and Hernando, a bird who would've worked with Nigel to capture other birds and an extended scene Alice and Chloe were accompanied by sparrows and crows to mock Blu's inability to fly.

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