The New York Times has a nice piece about Blue Sky Studios, their history, how they upset the major players in 2009, and their future. They note that Ice Age 3 was the #1 animated film of 2009 at the global box office, easily besting Pixar’s Up and DreamWorks’ Monsters vs. Aliens — and they did it with half the budget of those films. “In fact, adjusted for inflation, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs ranks as the third biggest computer-animated movie of all time”. The studio’s upcoming projects include: Rio (directed by Ice Age 3‘s Carlos Saldanha and set for an April 2011 release) about “a rare macaw who thinks he is the last of his kind”; The Leaf Men (directed by Blue Sky co-founder and Oscar winner Chris Wedge) is based on the William Joyce book; and Ice Age 4.