Angry Birds Is Not Huge, It’s Massive

It’s often easy to underestimate the size of certain, highly recognized brands. Rovio, the developer of Angry Birds, is extremely large, given everything evolves around a single game theme.

Based on CNNMoney’s interview with Peter Vesterbacka, CMO, Rovio, the game has “beefed up graphics and it’s possible to play it fullscreen” [thanks to Flash Player 11 and Stage3D]. Furthermore the interview unveils some very impressive details.

CNN’s interviewer Laurie Segall indicated that Rovio turned down a 2 billion offer from Zynga. Peter believes they could grow larger than Zynga, since they are not a gaming company, but are building an entertainment franchise, which is “significantly bigger than just games”. They want to “make Angry Birds a permanent part of pop-culture”. Besides reaching all screens, toys and physical products are a focus, and they have already more than 20.000 Angry Birds products in the market.

Although still a small company with 55 employees in 2011, Rovio seems to make some aggressive steps.

Rovio is investigating ways to expand the Angry Birds brand, including merchandise, television shows and movies. […]

Mikael Hed, CEO of Rovio Mobile, has envisioned a feature film in the stop-motion animation style of Aardman Animation. To that end, Rovio has purchased a Helsinki-based animation studio to prepare Angry Birds short cartoons on Nickelodeon, the first of which was a Christmas special named “Wreck the Halls” that debuted on Nickelodeon in December 2011. Rovio also hired David Maisel, former executive producer of Marvel Studios films such as Iron Man and Thor, to head up production of feature-length films. Hed acknowledges that such a film would be years away, and that Rovio must keep the characters relevant until then, by producing sequels or new ports of the original game. Rovio officials have hinted that one such “sequel” will be told from the pigs’ point of view. [Wikipedia].

Very impressive scale and future plans, and just maybe a bit out of control.

All great reasons to play the Flash Player 11/Stage3D Angry Birds version on Facebook.