Development on a theatrical adaptation of Rovio's popular Smart Phone game Angry Birds is moving forward, with former Marvel Studios chairman David Maisel coming aboard as a special advisor.

Angry Birds is still a long way from seeing theater screens, with the earliest year for release being 2014. David Maisel will serve as an executive producer on the project. He is also the executive producer behind this summer's Captain America: The First Avenger and Thor.

Here is what David Maisel had to say about the film.

"There has been so much chatter about an Angry Birds' movie, but it's now real. The process is starting now. People are interacting with these characters six inches from them each time they play, and that creates an emotional connection. This is not an American thing. It's not even a Finnish thing. It's a global thing that's something I've never seen before. It will be exciting to expand (this intellectual property) within Hollywood."

Finnish animation studio Kombo, which was acquisitioned last year by Rovio, will produce a series of animated shorts introducing each character, and these will lead directly into the launch of the feature film. It isn't known how soon the first of these shorts will become available to the viewing public.