A tragic day for the animation industry as one of the key studios that helped revolutionized CGI animation has come to a close. Blue Sky Animation, best known for the Ice Age movie series, had been a well recognized name in the industry thanks to it being the main power house for 20th Century Fox in regards to animation. Many had been curious to see what the studio would do after the Disney-merger with Fox as many were unsure if Disney were still going to keep the studio around as they already have two major power house animation studios under their belt already. Sadly, it seems they did not have any major plans for the studio, as Disney is shutting Bdown lue Sky Animation.

The reasoning behind the shut down comes from the economic struggles of the on-going pandemic. The company had been going through some struggles during the pandemic and it seemed keeping another high profile animation studio was no viable. About 450 employees of the studio will be affected by this outcome, and will receive help from Disney and Greenwich to explore other positions at other internal studios. Despite the studio going under however, the Ice Age movie franchise will not go extinct, as projects are still planned featuring the characters that are said to appear on Disney Plus sometime in the near future. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for their current projects as Blue Sky’s next upcoming project based on the hit graphic novel, Nimona, has been cancelled all together. The studio is expecting to shut its down sometime in April of this year.

It is an unfortunate precedent that Disney had to shut Blue Sky after all the great success they have gotten. The Ice Age movies had been tremendously successful in the pass with them grossing about 3.2 billion dollar worldwide. They also received a lot of critical acclaim for their work on films like, The Peanuts Movies, and their most recent effort with Spies in Disguise, and even gained two Oscar nominations for Best Animated Film with the first Ice Age and Ferdinand. While it is tragic that the studio is closing down, their work will not be forgotten anytime soon. Here’s hoping that future endeavors for the current employees of Blue Sky will be good for them later on.