Blue Sky Studios Animated Movies Ranked
11. Rio 2 (2014)
Budget: $103million
Worldwide Box Office: $500million
Starring: Anne Hathaway, Jesse Eisenberg, Bruno Mars, Jamie Foxx, Kristin Chenoweth, Andy Garcia, George Lopez, Jermaine Clement, Will.i.am, Tracy Morgan, Leslie Mann, Rodrigo Santoro
In looking to capitalise on their critically and financially successful original movie Rio, Blue Sky went back to their characters to give the same sequel treatment they had given to Ice Age, offering the central couple a family for the adult members of their audience to identify with.
Though this had been developed to huge success in Ice Age 2, Rio 2 didn’t have the same level of box office boost the majority of sequels usually have and thus became a somewhat forgotten title in the Blue Sky filmography, a problem unaided by the lack of creativity in the writing room and a loss of Brazilian energy in the overall picture.
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10. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009)
Budget: $90million
Worldwide Box Office: $886.7million
Starring: Ray Romano, Denis Leary, John Leguizamo, Queen Latifah, Simon Pegg, Chris Wedge, Karen Disher, Josh Peck, Seann William Scott, Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig, Joey King, Jane Lynch
By the time the Ice Age franchise had reached this, the third instalment in its would-be 5-film-long saga, it had become clear that there was money to be had. What Dawn of the Dinosaurs proved was that there was perhaps more money than even the studio could anticipate, with the film going on to earn over $886million globally – the highest gross of any Blue Sky Studios release to date.
On the screen, the story was quite different, with the addition of Simon Pegg – fresh off success in Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and Mission: Impossible III – having little effect on the dwindling quality of the franchise. It was clear that, in exploring the hollow Earth theory that would bring Dinosaurs back to the universe despite the central cast fighting off two extinction events previously, Blue Sky had sought to retroactively fix the relative speed at which they presented pre-historic earth, which reeked of bad decision making and a lack of foresight that would leave this film feeling more like a cash grab than any of the movies the studio had released beforehand.
It’s not that this film was necessarily bad, it’s more that it was lacking the feeling of being genuine, to children and adults alike, leaving it at a relatively low number 10.
9. Robots (2005)
Budget: $75million
Worldwide Box Office: $260.7million
Starring: Robin Williams, Ewan McGregor, Halle Berry, Chris Wedge, Amanda Bynes, Mel Brooks, Jennifer Coolidge, Jim Broadbent, Drew Carey, Greg Kinnear, Stanley Tucci, Paul Giamatti, Lucille Bliss, Paula Abdul, James Earl Jones, Jay Leno, Al Roker
Blue Sky’s 2005 outing Robots is an oft-forgotten cg-animated release despite starring the incomparable Robin Williams alongside some of the era’s most beloved and talented actors. This was likely due to the movie’s adequate, but generally bland, central story that failed to live up to the work being done by other studios at the time, with the unusual design of the characters and style of animation further separating the movie from the typical must-see type of animated movie from the era.
