Disney Announces Sixth 'Ice Age' Film To Be Released In 2026
Blue Sky, smiling at you once again, kind of, what will be 5 years after its closure.
As the United States rightfully fears a new dark age, and many Twitter users migrate to Bluesky fed up with Elon Musk, there’s another Blue Sky being evoked this weekend. The animation studio Disney closed after two years of ownership in 2021 following their purchase of 20th Century Fox had its IP raided after all. Disney and 20th Century Animation announced that a sixth mainline Ice Age, the original and mascot Blue Sky franchise, Friday at D23 Brazil, is in production for a 2026 theatrical release. Pour one out for the Brazilian audience who didn’t get any new Rio continuation announcement on their home turf.
The entire original trio is back reprising their roles, John Leguizamo as Sid, Ray Romano as Manny, and Denis Leary as Diego. Later additions confirmed to be returning are Queen Latifah as Manny’s wife Ellie and Simon Pegg as Buck Wild. Scrat is confirmed to be returning, along with Baby Scrat, making their feature film debut after their overall debut in the Scrat Tales shorts that were the last thing Blue Sky Studios produced. This means we should be expecting Chris Wedge and Kari Wahlgren in the film as well, but they were not confirmed. Probably not big enough names to boast. Ah well. No plot details are known yet.
In addition to Scrat Tales, 2022 saw the release of the franchise’s first spinoff film, subtitled The Adventures of Buck Wild, also released on Disney+. The Ice Age franchise began with the first film in 2002 co-directed by Chris Wedge and Carlos Saldanha. The movie was co-written by Michael Berg, Michael J. Wilson and Peter Ackerman, grossed $383.3 million at the global box office, and was part of the sophomore class of the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. The highest-grossing Ice Age was 2009s Dawn of the Dinosaurs, the third installment which made over $886 million worldwide. The main series was thought to be completed by 2016’s Collision Course, which grossed $408.5 million worldwide putting the franchise’s overall global gross at $3.2 billion worldwide.
The closure of Blue Sky has seen notable names move over to Annapurna Animation, which rescued Nimona to much awards acclaim, including founder Wedge developing a film there, Spies in Disguise and Nimona director Nick Bruno in charge of developing and directing an untitled original feature film, while actively developing several other original ideas, and producer Julie Zackary, the former Blue Sky Studios Vice President of Production become Annapurna’s Head of Animation. The current owners of the Peanuts franchise, Wildbrain Studios and Peanuts Worldwide, have taken the next movie to Apple, and it will be in the same style of the 2015 Blue Sky film.
Should it be compared to what Deadpool did to Wolverine’s skeleton in Deadpool & Wolverine? Probably not. But the announcement of the sixth Ice Age film was made with this video that can be watched below.
