MANILA, Philippines - Of all the memorable digital animation movies with talking animals and wonderful, colorful characters, the “Ice Age” movies would probably rank high in that list. Its director, Carlos Saldanha, now has a new movie that in all likelihood will follow the footsteps of the highly successful animated franchise. But it would not only introduce us to two new adorable talking animals, it would also bring to the screen a vibrant—if animated—introduction to his hometown of Rio de Janeiro.

“Rio” is Blue Sky Studios’ latest masterpiece, whose idea came to Saldanha after reading newspaper articles about penguins washing up on the beaches of Rio in the wintertime. Fashioning a story out of the notion of a tourist visiting Rio for the first time, he decided his main character would be a rare blue macaw that’s been smuggled out of Brazil to the U.S. as a baby chick.

“I wanted to keep the concept of someone coming to Rio with a fresh eye, a tourist's eye,” Saldanha notes. And with this blue macaw, “Even though he’s Brazilian, he had never been to Brazil since leaving the nest. That way, the character gets to see Rio for the first time and discover it.”

Its owner, Linda (voiced by Leslie Mann), a shy girl who runs a bookshop, has been convinced to bring the bird back to Brazil when scientists find out Blu (Jesse Eisenberg, “The Social Network”), her beloved pet macaw, is the last of his kind.  The aim was to have Blu meet this female macaw in Rio, Jewel (Anne Hathaway), and perhaps mate, with the tall order of possibly saving the species, of course.

More than telling the story of this odd bird couple, Saldanha’s calling was also to represent his hometown properly to the world. “I felt that I had a duty to make it as authentic as possible; I had no excuse to make mistakes,” he admits. “I could take some creative liberties, but in general the essence of Rio needed to be captured in the story—the energy and the vibe of the city, and the landmarks, too.”

To achieve this, he show his animators some maps—Google maps, even. He also whipped out the books with geographic landmarks and measurements. And as extreme as this may seem, it did the trick. “They actually built a digital city that's very close to Rio,” he says, astounded. “It is amazing to see how accurate those elements are. Later on, I grabbed a group of artists to come with me to Rio and took them on a tour of all the sites where the story takes place so they could actually see the distances and feel the locations and put things into context. That's when they finally got it, the essence of Rio.”

Growing up with fond memories of Rio’s beach culture, Saldanha nevertheless Rio gets its character from being a city of contrasts. “Because it's a beach town, you always have that carefree feeling… a little looser and more relaxed. But it’s a big city with a lot of problems. It's almost like planting a little bit of New York in the middle of a beach town. I wanted them to be able to capture the contrasts and elements that make the city unique. There are only a few cities in the world that have that combination of an urban, vibrant city connected so close to the beach, to the mountains and to nature in general. That to me is the essence of Rio…”

Admitting he is still fascinated with even the touristy places in Rio—like the Sugarloaf Mountain and the Christ the Redeemer statue in Corcovado Mountain—Saldanha plays a tourist guide of sorts with “Rio,” whose climax happens at the Carnival. It is one of the most anticipated holidays in Brazil happening on a Saturday and ends on Ash Wednesday (this year, the festival happened on the first week of March).

“I knew that would be the main set piece. But the key was to actually be there,” he says. Thus, “Rio” highlights the crowd, the passion of the people rooting for the Samba schools, the dancers, the scale of the floats, the costumes... It was almost just as good as being there. “We actually created a pretty damn good Samba school in our movie,” he says proudly.

As for his voice cast—which, aside from Eisenberg and Hathaway, includes Jamie Foxx, Jane Lynch and even will.i.am—Saldanha says, “I had a wish list of people I felt could fit the characters. Fortunately for me, when we presented the film’s concept and images to those actors on my wish list, they loved it and were very passionate about it. That was a good sign for me.”

“Rio” flies into local cinemas on April 7.