John Leguizamo says there’s a new Ice Age movie about to start.
20th Century Studios is reportedly developing a new Ice Age feature film — the new installment in the franchise since 2022, but also seemingly the first full-on Ice Age sequel since before Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox and the shuttering of Blue Sky Studios. Appearing in a new episode of NPR’s Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me, actor John Leguizamo said that they’re “about to do Ice Age 6.” Leguizamo, who voices Sid the Sloth, also performed the voice a little for the hosts, and talked a bit about how hard it is to get small children on board with the idea of voice actors.
The first Ice Age film debuted from Blue Sky and Fox in 2006. It would go on to inspire five more feature films, seven shorts, two holiday specials, and a TV series — titled Scrat Tales — between then and 2022. Questions about the franchise’s future have been up in the air since Blue Sky was closed.
“We’re about to do Ice Age 6, I think,” Leguizamo said during the interview.
According to Leguizamo, his kids never got too excited by his role in the Ice Age franchise.
“They were weirded out by their father — the way I look and then doing that voice,” Leguizamo explained. “They were too young.”
He added that sometimes, parents will come to him in public and try to introduce him as Sid the Sloth, but he tells them “it’s not gonna work out.”
You can hear the full episode below, with the pertinent quotes around the 20-minute mark.
The most recent film, 2022’s The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild, was a spinoff that didn’t feature most of the franchise cast. Both Scrat Tales and The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild debuted on Disney+, with the latter being the first feature-length Ice Age film that didn’t get a theatrical release. It performed reasonably well on Disney+, cracking the top ten for its first two weeks of release, but with poor reviews and no #1 to show for its sizable budget, it wasn’t considered a success. At the time, press materials suggested there was already a new Ice Age film in development, written by Ray DeLaurentis (The Fairly OddParents). There has been no official word from Disney since.
Besides Leguizamo, the Ice Age franchise has consistently featured Ray Romano (Fly Me to the Moon) Denis Leary (Rescue Me).
