Disney shuts down Ice Age & Rio movies’ Blue Sky Studios

Blue Sky Studios, an animation company which was previously owned by Fox Studios, which is credited for creating very successful animation movie franchises like the Ice Age and Rio, has now been shut down by Disney after it purchased Fox Studios a while ago.

The studio will close its operations over the next two months, and the resulting closure will cause a loss of nearly 450 positions in the company.

Advertisement

Disney had taken a hard hit due to the Coronavirus pandemic, having been forced to close or limit attendance at its theme parks and postpone feature film releases. Disney had reported losses worth a massive $2.86 billion on sales of $65.4 billion last fiscal year.

In a statement, the company said, “Given the current economic realities, after much consideration and evaluation, we have made the difficult decision to close filmmaking operations at Blue Sky Studios.”

Another big reason Disney had to close Blue Sky Studios is that it already operates major film-making studios including Disney Pixar, and operating two separate studios was taking a heavy toll on Disney’s financial resources.

There had earlier been a lot of speculation because Disney had not announced any Blue Sky projects after 2021. This has now been cleared up with the recent announcement.