Slumbering in a drab-looking office building here, Blue Sky Studios, the animated-movie division of 20th Century Fox, has long been dismissed as much of a threat. Nobody could catch DreamWorks and Pixar, moviedom figured, especially not a quiet studio that got its start with an animated laxative commercial.

So much for that theory.

Blue Sky’s most recent release, “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs,” was easily the No. 1 animated film of 2009 at the global box office, selling $888 million in tickets and dwarfing the totals for “Up” from Pixar and “Monsters vs. Aliens” from DreamWorks. Moreover, Blue Sky did it with about half the budget. Pixar and DreamWorks each lavished an estimated $175 million on their entries; Blue Sky spent about $90 million.

Adjusted for inflation, “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” ranks as the third biggest computer-animated movie of all time, behind “Shrek 2” (DreamWorks), which sold $1.1 billion worldwide, and “Finding Nemo” (Pixar), which hit $1 billion.

“Nobody has ever come close to challenging Pixar and DreamWorks at that highest threshold before,” said Jerry Beck, an animation historian and co-operator of the news blog CartoonBrew.com.

Read the full New Your Times article at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/11/business/media/11bluesky.html

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