Robots is a 2005 American animated science fiction adventure comedy film produced by 20th Century Fox Animation and Blue Sky Studios, and distributed by 20th Century Fox. The film was directed by Chris Wedge and co-directed by Carlos Saldanha from a screenplay by David Lindsay-Abaire and the writing team of Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, based on a story conceived by Lindsay-Abaire, Ron Mita and Jim McClain. It stars the voices of Ewan McGregor, Halle Berry, Greg Kinnear, Mel Brooks, Amanda Bynes, Drew Carey and Robin Williams. The story follows an ambitious inventor robot named Rodney Copperbottom (McGregor), who seeks his idol Bigweld (Brooks) to work for his company in Robot City, but discovers a plot by its new leader Ratchet (Kinnear) and his mother to forcibly upgrade its populace and eradicate struggling robots, known as "outmodes".
Blue Sky Studios, Inc. was an American visual effects and computer animation studio based in Greenwich, Connecticut. It was founded on February 22, 1987, by Chris Wedge, Michael Ferraro, Carl Ludwig, Alison Brown, David Brown, and Eugene Troubetzkoy after their employer, MAGI, one of the visual effects studios behind Tron, shut down. Using its in-house rendering software, the studio created visual effects for commercials and films before dedicating itself to animated film production. It produced 13 feature films, the first being Ice Age, released in 2002 by 20th Century Fox, and the final one being Spies in Disguise, released in 2019.
Ice Age: The Meltdown is a 2006 American animated adventure comedy film produced by Blue Sky Studios and distributed by 20th Century Fox. It is the sequel to Ice Age and the second installment in the Ice Age film series. The film was directed by Carlos Saldanha from a screenplay written by Peter Gaulke, Gerry Swallow, and Jim Hecht, and a story by Gaulke and Swallow. Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, and Chris Wedge reprise their roles from the first Ice Age film, with newcomers Seann William Scott, Josh Peck, and Queen Latifah joining the cast. In the film, Manny, Sid, and Diego attempt to escape an impending flood, during which Manny finds love.
Laika, LLC is an American production company specializing in stop-motion animation and forthcoming live-action feature films, commercial content for all media, music videos, and short films. The studio is best known for its stop-motion feature films Corpse Bride, Coraline, ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls, Kubo and the Two Strings, and Missing Link. It is owned by Nike co-founder Phil Knight and is located in Hillsboro, Oregon, part of the Portland metropolitan area. Knight's son, Travis Knight, acts as Laika's president and CEO.
Carlos Saldanha is a Brazilian animator, director, producer, and voice actor of animated films who worked with Blue Sky Studios until its closure in 2021. He was the director of Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006), Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009), Rio (2011), Rio 2 (2014), Ferdinand (2017), and Harold and the Purple Crayon (2024), and the co-director of Ice Age (2002) and Robots (2005). Saldanha was nominated in 2003 for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film for Gone Nutty and in 2018 for Best Animated Feature for Ferdinand.
Scrat is a fictional rodent in the Ice Age franchise and the mascot of the now-defunct animation company Blue Sky Studios. In the 2002 film Ice Age plus its follow-up shorts and theatrical sequels, he is a saber-toothed, long-snouted ratlike squirrel with no dialogue who is obsessed with trying to collect and bury his acorn(s), putting himself in danger and usually losing his food in the process to his frustration. He additionally is a catalyst for major natural disasters that drastically alter the world around him and at times sets the stage for the main conflicts of the films. Scrat's storylines are mostly independent of those of other characters of "the Herd," though the two do intersect at times. While Scrat is a side character for the theatrical films that he appears in, he is the protagonist of other media such as certain shorts and his own miniseries Ice Age: Scrat Tales. In all of his appearances, he was voiced by the studio co-founder Chris Wedge, who also directed the first film.
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs is a 2009 American animated adventure comedy film produced by Blue Sky Studios and distributed by 20th Century Fox. It is the sequel to Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006) and the third installment in the Ice Age film series. It was directed by Carlos Saldanha and co-directed by Mike Thurmeier, from a screenplay written by Michael Berg, Peter Ackerman, Mike Reiss, and Yoni Brenner, based on a story conceived by Jason Carter Eaton. Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, and Chris Wedge reprise their roles from the first two films and Seann William Scott, Josh Peck, and Queen Latifah reprise their roles from The Meltdown, with Simon Pegg joining them in the role of a weasel named Buck. In the film, while Manny and Ellie are preparing for their baby, Sid the Sloth is kidnapped by a female Tyrannosaurus after stealing her eggs, leading the rest of the herd to rescue him in a tropical lost world inhabited by dinosaurs underneath the ice.
Ice Age is an American media franchise centering on a group of mammals surviving the Pleistocene ice age. It consists of computer-animated films, short films, TV specials and a series of video games. The first five films were produced by Blue Sky Studios and distributed by its then parent company 20th Century Fox. The series features the voices of Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Queen Latifah, and Chris Wedge. The film series centers mainly on "the Herd," which since the first film consists of at least Manny, Sid, and Diego. The franchise also features mostly independent plotlines involving a dialogue-free saber-toothed squirrel named Scrat, who ends up in misadventures from trying to retrieve and bury his acorns.
Ice Age: Continental Drift is a 2012 American animated adventure comedy film produced by Blue Sky Studios and distributed by 20th Century Fox. It is the sequel to Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009) and the fourth installment in the Ice Age film series. The film was directed by Steve Martino and Michael Thurmeier from a screenplay written by Michael Berg and Jason Fuchs, based on a story conceived by Berg and co-producer Lori Forte. Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Seann William Scott, Josh Peck, Queen Latifah, and Chris Wedge reprise their roles from previous films, with Peter Dinklage, Jennifer Lopez, Drake, and Nicki Minaj voicing new characters. The plot focuses on Scrat mistakenly sending Manny, Sid, and Diego adrift on an iceberg with Sid's Granny and causing them to face a gang of pirates led by Captain Gutt.
Ice Age is a 2002 American animated adventure comedy film produced by Blue Sky Studios and distributed by 20th Century Fox. The film was directed by Chris Wedge and co-directed by Carlos Saldanha from a screenplay by Michael Berg, Michael J. Wilson, and Peter Ackerman, based on a story by Wilson. It features the voices of Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Goran Višnjić, and Jack Black. Set during the days of the Pleistocene ice age, the film centers around three main characters—Manny (Romano), a no-nonsense woolly mammoth; Sid (Leguizamo), a loudmouthed ground sloth; and Diego (Leary), a sardonic saber-toothed tiger—who come across a human baby and work together to return it to its tribe. Additionally, the film occasionally follows Scrat, a speechless "saber-toothed squirrel" (Wedge), who is perpetually searching for a place in the ground to bury his acorn.
Karen Beth Disher is an American film director and storyboard artist. Disher is best known for her work at MTV Animation, where she was the chief character designer and supervising director for the animated series Daria (1997–2002) following her previous work as a layout artist for Beavis and Butt-Head (1993–1997).
Epic is a 2013 American animated fantasy action-adventure film loosely based on William Joyce's 1996 children's book The Leaf Men and the Brave Good Bugs, produced by Blue Sky Studios and distributed by 20th Century Fox. The film was directed by Chris Wedge from a screenplay written by Joyce, James V. Hart, Daniel Shere, and the writing team of Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember, based on a story conceived by Joyce, Hart, and Wedge. It stars the voices of Colin Farrell, Josh Hutcherson, Amanda Seyfried, Christoph Waltz, Aziz Ansari, Chris O'Dowd, Pitbull, Jason Sudeikis, Steven Tyler, and Beyoncé Knowles.
Monster Trucks is a 2016 American live action/animated monster comedy film co-produced by Paramount Animation, Nickelodeon Movies and Disruption Entertainment for Paramount Pictures. It was directed by Chris Wedge, in both his live-action directorial debut and first directorial effort outside of his own company Blue Sky Studios, and written by Derek Connolly, from a story by Jonathan Aibel, Glenn Berger and Matthew Robinson. The film stars Lucas Till, Jane Levy, Amy Ryan, Rob Lowe, Danny Glover, Barry Pepper, Thomas Lennon, and Holt McCallany, and follows Tripp Coley, a young junkyard employee who finds a subterranean creature living in his truck.
Stephen Michael Martino is an American designer and film director. He is best known for directing the Blue Sky Studios films Horton Hears a Who! (2008), Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012), and The Peanuts Movie (2015).
Ice Age: Collision Course is a 2016 American animated adventure comedy film produced by Blue Sky Studios and distributed by 20th Century Fox. It is the sequel to Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012) and the fifth installment in the Ice Age film series. The film was directed by Michael Thurmeier and co-directed by Galen T. Chu, from a screenplay written by Michael Wilson, Michael Berg, and Yoni Brenner, based on a story conceived by Aubrey Solomon. Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Keke Palmer, Josh Peck, Simon Pegg, Seann William Scott, Jennifer Lopez and Queen Latifah reprise their roles from previous films, with Adam DeVine, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Max Greenfield, Jessie J and Nick Offerman voicing new characters. In the film, after Scrat is propelled into outer space in an abandoned spaceship during an attempt to bury his acorn and accidentally sends a giant asteroid towards Earth, Manny, the Herd and Buck must go on a life-or-death mission to find a way to fend it off.
The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild is a 2022 animated adventure comedy film directed by John C. Donkin, in his feature directorial debut, with a screenplay by Jim Hecht, Ray DeLaurentis, and William Schifrin. It is a spin-off film of the Ice Age franchise, and the sixth installment overall. The film stars the voices of Simon Pegg, Vincent Tong, Aaron Harris, Utkarsh Ambudkar, and Justina Machado also starring in the film. It follows the two opossum brothers Crash and Eddie and their adventure to becoming independent possums alongside the titular character Buck Wild.
Ice Age: Scrat Tales is an American animated series of shorts produced by Blue Sky Studios, which premiered on Disney+ on April 13, 2022. It is a spin-off of the Ice Age franchise and the first series of shorts in the franchise. It is also the final production from Blue Sky Studios to be released by 20th Century Studios following the studio's closure on April 10, 2021. The series focuses on Scrat, a saber-toothed squirrel who discovers that he has a son. It received generally positive reviews from critics with praise for its animation, humor, music, and light-hearted tone, with critics and audiences alike also considering it as a good sendoff to the studio.
