Summary
- Blue Sky Studios, known for popular films like Ice Age and Rio, was once a major player in the animation industry but closed in April 2021 due to a corporate acquisition and cost-cutting efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Despite not being as acclaimed as competitors like Pixar and DreamWorks, Blue Sky Studios received attention and awards, including an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film and nominations for Best Animated Film.
- The closure of Blue Sky Studios was a result of Disney's acquisition of 21st Century Fox and the financial challenges of maintaining three separate animation studios. The studio's closure left 450 employees without work. However, Blue Sky's last movie, Nimona, was picked up by Annapurna Pictures and has been well-received by critics and audiences.
When people think of animated studios, they tend to think of Disney and its subsidiary Pixar. Other names that come to mind are DreamWorks animation and their stable of franchises like Shrek, Kung Fu Panda, and How To Train Your Dragon. In the 2010s, Illumination Entertainment made themselves a name to be reckoned with thanks to their popular Minions characters and recently with The Super Mario Bros. Movie. Yet one name that used to be a major player but is no longer around is Blue Sky Studios.
Update July 24, 2023: This article has been updated by Mona Bassil following the release of Nimona on Netflix.
Blue Sky Studios released popular films like Ice Age, Horton Hears a Who, and Robots. They seemed like one of the biggest names in animation. Yet the studio became victim to both a major corporate acquisition and cost-cutting efforts due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On April 10, 2021, the studio officially closed. The studio did not survive and now remains a memory. Yet its legacy lives on through its films, and here is a look back at what happened to Blue Sky Studios.
Blue Sky Studios in a Nutshell
A subsidiary of 20th Century Fox Animation, Blue Sky Studios was founded in February 1987 by Chris Wedge, Michael Ferraro, Carl Ludwig, Alison Brown, David Brown, and Eugene Troubetzkoy. It was known for creating computer-animated kids' movies such as Rio, Robots, Ferdinand, Epic, the entire Ice Age franchise, and more. It was one of the visual effects companies responsible for the kids' computer-animated movie Tron that brought the studio to life.
Following the acquisition of 20th Century Fox by Disney, Blue Sky Studios became the sister company to Walt Disney Animation Studios and Pixar; all three companies produced computer-animated children's movies. While Blue Sky Studios may have been best known for creating feature films like Ice Age and Rio, they were also responsible for many animated short films and a couple of television specials related to Ice Age, the movie in its time.
Blue Sky Box Office and Awards
Blue Sky Studios' best-reviewed movie was The Peanuts Movie in 2015, with 87% on Rotten Tomatoes, and for the most part, their Rotten Tomatoes average was in the 70's. Ice Age was the studio's most successful franchise, and the third film, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, was their most successful film both at the domestic and worldwide box office grossing $195.6 million domestically and $886.6 million worldwide.
Blue Sky Studios' might not have been the major plays at the Academy Awards that competitors like Pixar and DreamWorks were, but they got a fair amount of attention. Their short film Bunny won Best Animated Short Film at the Academy Awards in 1998. Both Ice Age and Ferdinand were nominated for Best Animated Film, and Rio was nominated for Best Original Song.
Why Did Blue Sky Studios Shut Down?
It all began to crumble the moment Disney Studios bought 21st Century Fox in March 2019. Shortly following that purchase, the pandemic came into view, and after several years of trying to maintain three separate animation studios, the decision to cut Blue Sky Studios was taken.
In February 2021, the verdict was made official, and Disney advised that they had decided to pull the plug on Blue Sky Studios at the end of March. Like clockwork, April 2021 signaled the end of the studio. Disney cited the reason for the sudden death as a financial battle that they just could not win while maintaining the three studios during and post-pandemic. In addition, Blue Sky Studios saw their staff of 450 employees out of work. It is said that Disney tried to relocate them to different internal positions, but it wasn't very practical, given that the other two animation studios still operating were thousands of miles away on the West Coast.
In a fitting farewell to the studio, the team at Blue Sky Animation released on final Scrat short. Scrat originated in Ice Age and had become a mascot for the studio, as for almost twenty years, audiences watched as Scrat tried to get his precious acorn. On April 13, 2022, the same day Disney+ released Scrat Tales shorts, a 34-second clip was released on YouTube. Titled "The End" it saw Scrat finally achieve his dream of eating that acorn. It was the final piece of animation that Blue Sky Animation did and fittingly arrived just shortly after the 20th anniversary of Ice Age. Blue Sky Animation closed the book in many ways.
Nimona: from Blue Sky to Annapurna Pictures
A lot of people were shocked when Disney announced they would be closing Blue Sky Studios, including animator and director Patrick Osbourne and the staff on set for the Nimona movie, which was already in production as an adaptation of the 2015 independent graphic novels by ND Stevenson.
The production was therefore halted, and for a while, there was no talk of picking it back up due to issues that had previously surfaced regarding the LGBTQ+ theme of the movie right after Disney bought 21st Century Fox. This happened around the same time Florida's "Don't Say Gay" bill was pushed forward in March 2022. Disney did not speak up regarding the issue, which was interpreted as an indirect stand against the creation of an animated film with a same-sex kiss written into it.
Per Comics Beat, "The animated film would have been the studio’s first feature-length film with a queer lead. Now, three people who worked on the project have come forward and stated that the movie met disapproval from studio parent Disney, particularly because it depicted a gay kiss. It featured two male leads kissing, it featured a gender-nonconforming lead heroine."
Another studio, Annapurna Pictures, founded in 2011, decided to breathe life back into Nimona in April 2022. Directed by Nick Bruno and Troy Quane, it features the voices of Chloë Grace Moretz as the titular character, a rebellious teenage shapeshifter; the British actor and rapper Riz Ahmed as Ballister Boldheart, a former knight with a robotic prosthetic arm accused of murder; Eugene Lee Yang as a champion knight and the latter's love interest; Frances Conroy as The Director; Beck Bennett as Sir Thoddeus Sureblade; and RuPaul Charles as Nate Knight.
Nimona premiered at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival on June 14, 2023, was released in a small selection of movie theaters on June 23, and started streaming on Netflix on June 30. It has been generally well received, both by critics and the general public. According to The New York Times, "This is a big message film that wants audiences to reflect on social paranoia. At its heart, it’s a pointed allegory about politicians who build their national profile on the backs of queer and transgender children. Nimona the character doesn’t claim to speak for them, but does try to speak to them and to others grappling with the concept of what it might feel like when your shell doesn’t match your soul."
Now you know the moderately heartbreaking story of Blue Sky Studios and the sprinkle of a happy ending with the continuation of its last movie, Nimona. Unfortunately, everything isn't black and white with studios that house the inspiration to create our children's heroes and favorite characters that they will dress up as and pretend to be now. The world is a complicated place where love spurs fighting, and something as simple as an animated movie studio can make or break the lives of so many involved.