Netflix Sets August Premiere For 'Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie'
Netflix Sets August Premiere For 'Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie'
Ohhhhhh who’s starring in spinoff films under the sea?
It’s the 25th anniversary of SpongeBob SquarePants! The megahit Nicktoon premiered after the Kids Choice Awards on May 1, 1999 on Nickelodeon. While the first network for kids hasn’t publicly laid out its full anniversary plans just yet, it’s Netflix who happened to mark the anniversary by finally announcing a premiere date for the one SpongeBob thing they have in their arsenal…in the United States: Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie.
It’s been just over a year since the streamer released the first look, and now the film has been set for an August 2 global release this year. About everyone’s favorite underwater Texan squirrel, now fresh off a very well-received Super Bowl sideline reporting gig, Netflix says “the stakes couldn’t be higher. The plucky maritime rodent is off on a quest with SpongeBob to save her adopted hometown. Bikini Bottom will never be the same.” Directed by Liza Johnson, Bikini Bottom’s denizens are suddenly scooped out of the ocean for a villainous plot. Sandy and SpongeBob, voiced once again by Carolyn Lawrence and Tom Kenny respectively, must journey to Texas to save the town. Of course, the rest of the show’s cast is here, namely Bill Fagerbakke as Patrick, Mr. (Doug) Lawrence as Plankton, Rodger Bumpass as Squidward, Clancy Brown as Mr. Krabs, Mary Jo Catlett as Mrs. Puff, and Jill Talley as Karen. Sandy’s family has Craig Robinson as Pa Cheeks, Grey Griffin as both Ma and Granny Cheeks, and in his second role in the series, Johnny Knoxville is voicing presumed brother Randy Cheeks. Wanda Sykes plays the villain Sue Nahmee in live-action, because hey it’s a tradition for the movies at this point.
While Nickelodeon and Netflix have made great strides in mending fences after the network stopped providing their library to the streamer over a decade ago (before Netflix blew up with its originals) with not only the return of library titles but originals and shows like That Girl Lay Lay and Erin & Aaron streaming there before Paramount+, there hasn’t been much in the way of SpongeBob otherwise domestically. Everywhere that isn’t the United States, Canada (where it got a theatrical release during the pandemic), and China got The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run on Netflix in November 2020, four months before it was a domestic Paramount+-exclusive launch title. The Casagrandes Movie, released this past March, featured Conch Street (the street SpongeBob, Patrick and Squidward live on) as a potential escape destination for the demigoddess Punguari. Sixteen countries do carry the series to some extent, and it’s been very successful on it. And yes many people saw the film in the early part of the year thanks to a leak (I tried avoiding them, but did see screenshots of Sykes’s role), so it’ll be great to finally have the film out legally.
The film is written by Kaz and Tom Stern, and series vets Marc Ceccarelli and Vincent Waller serve as executive producers. At CinemaCon, Paramount shared the logo for the mainline fourth film, subtitled The Search for SquarePants, affirming its December 19, 2025 date it was delayed to in October. Don’t call her Sandy Squirrel when Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie arrives on Netflix August 2 or you’ll be deader than a metaphor in a simile park.
Sources: Tudum, What’s On Netflix