Oh no! As if getting sucked into the Angry Birds app wasn’t bad enough, now comes word that my avian addiction will be egged on during the Super Bowl – in the form of a commercial for an animated movie called Rio.
A commercial slated to air during the fourth quarter of Sunday’s game will contain a frame that has an embedded code that will unlock a secret level of the insanely popular mobile app. Complete the level, and be entered into an official “Rio” sweepstakes, with the grand-prize winner getting a trip to Rio de Janiero for the movie’s March 22 premiere. Not so coincidentally, that’s also the launch date for a new “Angry Birds Rio” app.
Rio is a comedy adventure in 3D (isn’t everything these days?) from the makers of Ice Age. It’s about a domesticated Macaw from Minnesota who heads to Brazil in search of his female counterpart. Danger, mayhem, and comedy ensue, mostly because the Macaw never learned how to fly.
The movie features the voices of Anne Hathaway, Jesse Eisenberg and George Lopez, among others. Actually, I have no idea if the movie will be any good, but props for the mass marketing and cross promotion effort from 20th Century Fox and Rovio, the creative masterminds behind Angry Birds.
It’s hard to explain how or why the mobile app has taken off into the stratosphere. It’s a time-suck that can rival the likes of Facebook and Twitter. And it has no redeeming value whatsoever. 
You spend countless minutes (that can easily turn into countless hours) slinging and flinging an array of birds into ramshackle fortresses that seek to provide shelter to some green pigs that stole the birds’ eggs (making ‘em angry, angry birds). Got that? If so, prepare to hit the pause button on your DVR sometime during the fourth quarter. Or, if you’re too consumed by the game or happen to be at the mall instead, you’ll be able to watch the spot after the game at various places across the web including youtube.com/officialriomovie.
Fox isn’t the only studio shelling out big bucks to promote potential blockbusters to the Super Bowl XLV audience. Among the trailers you can expect to see on Sunday: Paramount’s Rango, Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon, Thor, and Captain America: The First Avenger, Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, and DreamWorks’ Cowboys & Aliens.