Ready to enter a new “Ice Age?”
Disney has announced that a sixth “Ice Age” film, the first proper installment in the franchise since 2016’s “Ice Age: Collision Course,” will arrive in theaters in 2026. And what’s more, original cast members Ray Romano, John Leguizamo and Queen Latifah are set to return. (It’s unclear if Denis Leary will be back; let us pray.)
The news comes out of D23 Brazil, the first South American version of the Disney fan convention that had previously been held at the Anaheim Convention Center across the street from Disneyland.
One of the most successful animated franchises in history, the series has amassed more than $6 billion over those original five movies.
One of the bigger question marks surrounding a sixth “Ice Age” is who will be animating the feature. Famously, the earlier films were done by Blue Sky Studios, an animation studio in Greenwich, Connecticut, that was also responsible for “The Peanuts Movie” and “Rio” (among others). When Disney acquired the 21st Century assets in 2019, the future of Blue Sky was in jeopardy. Disney released one last Blue Sky production, 2019’s “Spies in Disguise,” and then disbanded the company, choosing to focus on their own studios – Walt Disney Animation Studios and Pixar.
Disney released “The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild” directly to Disney+, which was inspired by the look of the original films but animated by Vancouver-based Bardel Entertainment. Simon Pegg was the only original cast member to return, even though several of the characters from the original “Ice Age” movies showed up.
If you’ve never seen one of the “Ice Age” movies, they follow a merry band of mammals, led by Romano’s woolly mammoth Manny, Leguizamo’s ground sloth Sid and Leary’s Diego, a sabertoothed tiger. Eventually, other mammals are folded in, like Pegg’s weasel. One of the hallmark characters of the franchise is Scrat, a sabertoothed squirrel, who is constantly in search of an elusive nut and always thwarted by some environmental havoc.
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