With Hollywood producing an endless stream of 3D CG animated projects, there’s always plenty of voice roles to go around. Fox Animation is now busy filling up the roster of star talent for its new feature, Rio, about a nerdy macaw who escapes from his small-town Minnesota cage and heads to the exotic city of Rio de Janeiro.
THR reports that Anne Hathaway and Neil Patrick Harris are both negotiating voice roles on the movie, as is Rodrigo Santoro. At the moment Fox hasn’t confirmed the casting, but both Hathaway and Harris have lent their voices to animated projects before, she with Hoodwinked! and he on the recent Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs.
Rio is the next film from Carlos Saldanha, who is Fox’s golden boy at the moment following the gargantuan success of Ice Age: Dawn Of The Dinosaurs, which outgrossed Tranformers 2 around the world and currently has $882 million in the box office bank, making it the second most successful animated movie ever and a bigger grosser than anything Pixar has ever produced!
Rio is currently set for a April 8, 2011 release, at which time well be able to see whether parrots can rival prehistorical animals at the cinema.