The Ice Age franchise was on shaky ground when the Disney acquisition of Fox brought about the demise of Blue Sky Animation, but now The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild brings the prehistoric gang to Disney+ for a new outing.
The ice age Franchise makes its debut under the Disney banner in January 2022 with The Ice Age: Adventures of Buck Wild, coming to Disney+ at the turn of the year. The ice age Films were previously produced by Blue Sky Animation and were considered their most important intellectual property, having generated over $6 billion across five films, numerous short films and merchandising, but with the studio’s collapse following Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox, Disney seems to be dying still believing there’s still life in the prehistoric series and they’ve wasted no time putting together their first offering, which sees the return of Simon Pegg as the one-eyed weasel Buck Wild.
While the Ice Age films have enjoyed success since the original’s release in 2002, the latest entries have continued to bring in a reasonable box office return but have suffered from so-so reviews and become an overall disappointment for the studio. With The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild Marked as a Disney+ exclusive, Disney clearly doesn’t think the film warrants a theatrical release, but they will be more than happy to have such a well-known brand on the Disney+ platform.
There is currently only a short synopsis for the film, which reads: “The fearless one-eyed weasel Buck (Simon Pegg) joins forces with mischievous opossum brothers Crash & Eddie as they embark on a new adventure at Buck’s home: The Dinosaur World.” A new trailer released for the film sees the return of some familiar faces from the ice age franchise, including original characters Manny, Sid, and Diego voiced again by Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, and Denis Leary, along with Queen Latifah voicing Ellie again. Rounding out the main cast are Seann William Scott as Crash and Josh Peck as Eddie.
The idea of a Buck Wild spin-off was originally conceived at Blue Sky as a TV series, which when Disney jumped in looked like it would go to Disney+ as an exclusive show. There was an update on the project through Disney’s Investor Day stream in 2020, confirming that a new ice age Spin-off was in production and would take the form of a new film rather than the original idea of a TV series. A teaser trailer for the film was released as part of Disney+ Day, and a premiere date has been set for January 28, 2022.
The new film will be the first entry into the franchise since 2016 collision course, which showed signs of “Jumping the Shark” when it decided to include all manner of space antics for the prehistoric gang, with Scrat’s endless acorn hunt leading to him blasting into space in a UFO, sparking a series of intergalactic events, threatening to destroy the earth. In order to save the planet, the group of friends must reunite with Buck and find a way to save the planet. From the trailer and synopsis, it looks like things are getting a little more grounded and certainly appear to contain plenty of the humor that has become the series’ trademark.