Ice Age (franchise)

For other uses, see Ice Age (disambiguation).

Ice Age is Blue Sky's first computer animated movie franchise, started by Carlos Saldanha and Chris Wedge of the comedy-drama genre. The first film in the franchise was released on March 15, 2002.

Set in the ice age time period, it follows the adventures of fictional mammals consisting Manfred (a woolly mammoth), Sid (a sloth), Diego (a saber-tooth cat), Ellie (Manny's wife), Crash and Eddie (possums), Peaches (Manny and Ellie's daughter), and Scrat (a saber-tooth squirrel) among other characters.

Most movies and shorts have been produced by Blue Sky Studios and distributed by 20th Century Fox. The movies typically have received PG ratings for things such as for peril, rude humor, and mild language, with the first and fourth movies having more peril and less rude humor than the other installments of the series. The franchise has met financial success, having grossed nearly $3.2 billion worldwide in their theater runs. This makes it the 15th highest-grossing franchise of all time, and the second highest-grossing animated franchise worldwide (behind only the Shrek franchise).

On April 10, 2021, Blue Sky Studios was defuncted due to the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on The Walt Disney Company, resulting the future films which were in progress to be cancelled. Existing films can still be streamed on Disney+.

The spin-off film Ice Age: Adventures of Buck Wild will be the first film in the franchise to be produced solely by Bardel Entertainment and distributed by Walt Disney Pictures. It will be released on Disney+ in early 2022.

A sixth theatrical film was announced on November 8, 2024 at Disney's D23 event. Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Queen Latifah, Denis Leary, and Simon Pegg will be reprising their roles.^[1] The film will be released in 2026^[2], and will notably be the first Ice Age film to release since the closure of Blue Sky Studios. Likewise, Disney's rebranded 20th Century Animation appears to be handling production.

Plot Summary

Ice Age (2002)

In the ice age period, three animals (Manny the mammoth (Ray Romano), Sid the sloth (John Leguizamo), and Diego the saber-toothed cat (Denis Leary) go into an adventure to return a baby to a human tribe that has left for their campsite; however, Diego had been sent secretly by Soto (Goran Višnjić), the sabers' pack leader, to bring the baby and mammoth to a place known as the Half Peak so they can ambush and kill them.

Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006)

Global warming affects the environment and an immense amount of water threatens to flood the valley our heroes are currently living at. They have to go to the other side of the valley, where there presumably is a giant tree that can act as a boat to save them.

Meanwhile, Manny (Ray Romano) is teased about being the last mammoth, but he finds Ellie (Queen Latifah), a female woolly mammoth, who thinks that she's a possum (as she lives with her possum "brothers" Crash and Eddie (Josh Peck and Seann William Scott after being seperated from her herd and raised by their mother).

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009)

After the events of Ice Age: The Meltdown, life begins to change for Manny and his friends: Scrat is still on the hunt to hold onto his beloved acorn, while finding a possible romance in a female saber-toothed squirrel named Scratte. Manny and his new wife Ellie are expecting a baby, which leaves Manny anxious to ensure that everything is perfect for when his baby arrives. Diego is fed up with being treated like a house-cat and ponders the notion that he is becoming too laid-back. He eventually leaves the herd. Sid begins to wish for a family of his own, and so steals some dinosaur eggs which leads to Sid ending up in an underground world where dinosaurs roam free, and where his herd must rescue him, while dodging dinosaurs and facing danger left and right, and meeting up with a weasel known as Buck who hunts dinosaurs intently and has a mammal chauvinism.

Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012)

One of filmdom's most beloved trios – Ice Age's Manny, Diego, and Sid – embark upon their greatest adventure after a cataclysm sets an entire continent adrift. Separated from the rest of the herd, they use an iceberg as a makeshift ship, which launches them on an epic seafaring quest. Manny and the gang are challenged like never before to become heroes and do the impossible, as they encounter exotic sea creatures, explore a brave new world, and battle ruthless pirates. And Scrat's reunion with his cursed nut catapults him to places no prehistoric squirrel has gone before.

Ice Age: Collision Course (2016)

Set after the events of Continental Drift, Scrat's (Chris Wedge) epic never-ending pursuit of his elusive acorn lands him inside a U.F.O and catapults him outside of Planet Earth, where he accidentally sets off a series of cosmic meteors and a life-threatening asteroid that will transform, change and send every mammal (includingdinosaurs) into extinction. To save themselves from this unthinkable peril, Manny, Sid, Diego, and the rest of the herd leave their home and embark on a new adventurous quest, along with their old friend, Buck, to stop the asteroid while traveling to exotic new landscapes and encountering a host of colorful new characters, including the bipolar Shangri Llama, a family of Dakotaraptors, and the beautiful sloth, Brooke, who Sid falls in love with after his unexpected breakup with his former girlfriend, Francine.

Ice Age 6 (2026)

TBA.

Spin-off

Ice Age: Adventures of Buck Wild (2022)

Desperate for some distance from their older sister Ellie, the thrill-seeking possum brothers Crash and Eddie set out to find a place of their own, but quickly find themselves trapped in the Lost World, a massive cave underground. They are rescued by their one-eyed pal, the adventure-loving, dinosaur-hunting weasel Buck Wild, and together embark on a mission to save the Lost World from dinosaur domination.

Scrat

The movies have a subplot, where a saber-tooth squirrel named Scrat makes many comical attempts to bury his acorn, which he loved the most (probably even more than anything else in the world). Scrat's misfortunes include getting chased by an enormous glacier, being struck by lightning, trying to thaw out his acorn by a fire too long so that it accidentally took the form of a kernel of popcorn, and finally, getting frozen in an ice cube, along with his much sought after nut 20,000 years into the future.

Cast and Characters

Feature films

Short films

Television specials

Various Information

Basic Info

Box office statistics

Short films

There have been several released short feature films, in which Scrat has been the main character (with the exception of the third, which focuses on Sid), and the holiday specials that focus on all of the main characters.

• Gone Nutty (2003)
• No Time For Nuts (2006)
• Surviving Sid (2007)
• Scrat's Continental Crack-up (Part 1 • Part 2) (2010-2011)
• Ice Age: A Mammoth Christmas (2011)
• Cosmic Scrat-tastrophe (2015)
• Ice Age: The Great Egg-Scapade (2016)
• Scrat: Spaced Out (2017)

Videogames

• Ice Age (2002)
• Ice Age 2: The Meltdown (2006)
• Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009)
• Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012)
• Ice Age Village (2012)
• Ice Age Adventures (2014)
• Ice Age: Scrat's Nutty Adventure (2019)

Books

• Ice Age: The Movie Novel (2002)
• Ice Age: The Great Escape (2006)
• Ice Age: The Essential Guide (2006)
• Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs: The Junior Novel (2009)
• Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs: The Essential Guide (2009)
• Ice Age: Continental Drift: The Junior Novel (2012)
• Ice Age: Collision Course: The Junior Novel (2016)
• The Art of Ice Age (2016)

Comics

• Ice Age: Playing Favorites (2012)
• Ice Age: Where There's Thunder (2012)
• Ice Age: Iced In (2012)
• Ice Age: The Hidden Treasure (2013)
• Ice Age: Past, Presents, and Future! (2014)

External links

• Official website

References