Angry Birds: Rio is the first major tie in that developer Rovio has done with a movie studio. Still, the developer was clear about what their expectations were for the game and that they would control the content.
We made it clear from the beginning that we don’t want to make The Rio Game, says Rovio’s Peter Vesterbacka. We make our game, and we call the shots, that s fine. That’s why it s Angry Birds Rio and not even Rio: Angry Birds. This has been a great example of a true partnership. It’s not one of those awful movie games they make and hope for the best. The game really links into the Rio story and is a real step up.
Fox has also stepped up to the plate with their Super Bowl ad that mentioned the tie in game. The attention and buzz meant we beat all the other movies advertised during the game, added Vesterbacka. Fox is very happy as a lot of people now know about Rio, but because they heard about it through us. It’s almost like we have our own movie Fox is spending $100 million in the U.S. on advertising. The machinery behind us is huge and that means more people will download the game than ever. No other game has been marketed with this kind of approach before. We have big expectations for Angry Birds Rio. And after that you have the DVD release we have a lot around that and there will be interesting content on the DVD. Fox has learnt a lot from the process.
For Rovio, this experience will benefit them when and if they decide to do a movie or TV show on their own. Before Rio we’d been talking to all of the studios, and there were many Hollywood proposals saying they could make us famous and offering loads of money, said Vesterbacka. Our take was: we may be a small team from Finland, but we’re not totally stupid. We learned a lot from this game instead.
Source: MCV
