A beloved animated franchise is coming back to the big screen. Disney has announced that Ice Age 6 will debut in theaters in the United States in 2026. The news was delivered at D23 Brazil, the special event the company will be hosting over the course of the weekend. The last installment of the main series, Ice Age: Collision Course, premiered in 2016. The movie earned $408 million at the global box office, proving that audiences were still in love with these characters after so many years.

Manny (Ray Romano), Sid (John Leguizamo), Ellie (Queen Latifah), Diego (Denis Leary) and Buck (Simon Pegg) are all confirmed to return in the new adventure. No details were given regarding the premise of the next installment of the franchise, but the most recent sequels of the series proved that the sky’s the limit when it comes to these characters. No filmmakers have been attached to Ice Age 6. Previous directors in the franchise include Chris Wedge, Carlos Saldanha and Michael Thurmeier. The legacy of Ice Age will continue more than two decades after it first started.

The first Ice Age movie followed Manny, Sid and Diego as they had to return a lost human child to his family. The adventure required the animals to work together, even if they weren’t a fan of the idea. The movie earned $383 million at the global box office, ensuring that 20th Century Fox worked on the development of what would eventually become one of their biggest animated franchises. Characters such as Ellie and Buck were introduced in subsequent stories, such as Ice Age: The Meltdown and Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. Even if the series proved to be very successful twenty years ago, the characters have stayed away from the big screen for a long time.

‘Ice Age’ Under Disney

Before the pandemic, 20th Century Fox was acquired by the Walt Disney Company, transferring all of the studio’s intellectual property to the entity behind Frozen and Elemental. Disney previously tried to launch a new era of the Ice Age franchise with The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild, a spinoff that was sent directly to Disney+. A couple of years after that movie premiered on the company’s streaming platform, Ice Age 6 will allow Manny and his friends to return to the big screen in a new adventure for the entire family

Ice Age 6 will premiere in theaters in 2026.

via Collider