Ice Age

Ice Age is an American media franchise created by Michael J. Wilson, co-developed and based on an idea by Lori Forte. The franchise, centering on a group of mammals surviving the Pleistocene ice age, consists of computer-animated films, short films, TV specials and a series of video games. The first five films were produced by Blue Sky Studios and 20th Century Fox Animation (now 20th Century Animation), and distributed by its then-parent company 20th Century Fox (now 20th Century Studios). The series features the voices of Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, and Chris Wedge across all films, with Queen Latifah, Seann William Scott, Josh Peck, Simon Pegg, Wanda Sykes, Keke Palmer, and Jennifer Lopez joining the main cast in subsequent films. The films center mainly on the adventures of "the Herd," which since the first film consists of at least woolly mammoth Manny (Romano), ground sloth Sid (Leguizamo), and Smilodon Diego (Leary). The franchise also features mostly independent plotlines involving a dialogue-free saber-toothed squirrel named Scrat (Wedge), who ends up in misadventures from trying to retrieve and bury his acorns, the latter act creates a chain of events that sets up the various adventures of the protagonists.

Five theatrical films have been released in the series: Ice Age in 2002, Ice Age: The Meltdown in 2006, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs in 2009, Ice Age: Continental Drift in 2012, and Ice Age: Collision Course in 2016. As of April 2016, the franchise had generated $6 billion in revenue, making it one of the highest-grossing media franchises of all time. The franchise's films have received mixed-to-negative critical reviews with exception of the first film.