Blue Sky Studios, Inc. is an American computer animation film studio based in Greenwich, Connecticut. It is a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios, a division of the Walt Disney Company. The studio was founded in 1987 by Chris Wedge, Michael Ferraro, Carl Ludwig, Alison Brown, David Brown, and Eugene Troubetzkoy after the company they worked in, MAGI, one of the visual effects studios behind TRON, shut down. Using its in-house rendering software, the studio had worked on visual effects for commercials and films before completely dedicating itself to animated film production in 2002 starting with the release of Ice Age by 20th Century Fox. Ice Age and Rio are the studio's most successful franchises, while Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who! and The Peanuts Movie are its most critically praised films. As of 2013, Scrat, a character from the Ice Age films, is the studio's mascot.
Scrat, one of the main characters from the Ice Age franchise is Blue Sky Studios’ mascot.
History
Independent era
Throughout the late 1980s and 1990s, Blue Sky Studios concentrated on the production of television commercials and visual effects for film. In August 1997, 20th Century Fox's Los Angeles-based visual effects company, VIFX, acquired majority interest in Blue Sky Studios to form a new visual effects and animation company, temporarily renamed "Blue Sky/VIFX". Starting in 1990, Chris Wedge had been working on a short film named Bunny, intended to demonstrate CGI Studio. Blue Sky Studios released Bunny in 1998, and it received the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. Bunny's success gave Blue Sky Studios the opportunity to produce feature-length films. In March 1999, Fox decided to sell VIFX to another visual effects house, Rhythm & Hues Studios, while Blue Sky Studios would remain under Fox. In 2002, Blue Sky Studios produced their first feature film named Ice Age.
Disney acquisition
Blue Sky was acquired by the Walt Disney Company as part of their 2019 acquisition of the entertainment assets of 21st Century Fox, which concluded on March 20, 2019. On March 21, Disney announced that Blue Sky Studios and its parent company 20th Century Fox Animation would be integrated as units within the Walt Disney Studios with Co-Presidents Andrea Miloro and Robert Baird continuing to lead the studio reporting to Walt Disney Studios Chairman Alan Horn. Spies in Disguise will be the first Blue Sky Studios film to be distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.
Films
- Ice Age (2002)
- Robots (2005)
- Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006)
- Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who! (2008)
- Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009)
- Rio (2011)
- Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012)
- Epic (2013)
- Rio 2 (2014)
- The Peanuts Movie (2015)
- Ice Age: Collision Course (2016)
- Ferdinand (2017)
- Spies in Disguise (2019)
- Nimona (2021)