

The film was released in the United States on March 15, 2002.
Focus shifted from making an action-adventure drama film to a more comedy-oriented one, and several writers, such as Berg and Ackerman, were brought on to bring out a wittier tone. Ice Age was originally intended as a 2D animated film developed by Fox Animation Studios, but eventually became the first full-length animated film for the newly-reformed Blue Sky, which had been reshaped from a VFX house to a computer animation studio. Additionally, the film occasionally follows Scrat, a speechless "saber-toothed squirrel" voiced by Wedge, who is perpetually searching for a place in the ground to bury his acorn. Set during the days of the ice age, the film centers around three main characters-Manny (Romano), a no-nonsense woolly mammoth Sid (Leguizamo), a loudmouthed ground sloth and Diego (Leary), a sardonic saber-tooth tiger-who come across a human baby and work together to return it to its tribe. Wilson and Peter Ackerman and a story by Wilson, and features the voices of Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Goran Višnjić, and Jack Black. The film was directed by Chris Wedge (in his feature directorial debut) and co-directed by Carlos Saldanha from a screenplay by Michael Berg, Michael J. Ice Age is a 2002 American computer-animated adventure comedy film produced by Blue Sky Studios (in its debut film) and distributed by 20th Century Fox.
