Robots (2005 film)

Robots
A lineup of the film's characters on top of a background of the Robot City landscape.
Theatrical release poster
Directed byChris Wedge
Screenplay by
Story by
  • Ron Mita
  • Jim McClain
  • David Lindsay-Abaire
Produced by
Starring
Edited byJohn Carnochan
Music byJohn Powell
Production
companies
Distributed by20th Century Fox
Release dates
Running time
90 minutes[1]
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$75–80 million[2][3]
Box office$262.5 million[2]

Robots is a 2005 American animated science fiction adventure comedy film produced by 20th Century Fox Animation and Blue Sky Studios, and distributed by 20th Century Fox. The film was directed by Chris Wedge and co-directed by Carlos Saldanha from a screenplay by David Lindsay-Abaire and the writing team of Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, based on a story conceived by Lindsay-Abaire, Ron Mita and Jim McClain. It stars the voices of Ewan McGregor, Halle Berry, Greg Kinnear, Mel Brooks, Amanda Bynes, Drew Carey and Robin Williams. The story follows an ambitious inventor robot named Rodney Copperbottom (McGregor), who seeks his idol Bigweld (Brooks) to work for his company in Robot City, but discovers a plot by its new leader Ratchet (Kinnear) and his mother (Jim Broadbent) to forcibly upgrade its populace and eradicate struggling robots, known as "outmodes".

Development on the film began in 2000, when Wedge and children's author William Joyce failed to adapt Joyce's 1993 children's book Santa Calls, thus scrapping the idea and instead doing a story on robots.

Robots premiered at the Mann Village Theatre in Westwood, Los Angeles, on March 6, 2005, and was released in the United States on March 11. The film received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised the film's humor and creativity, but generally deemed its story and characters to be somewhat unoriginal and forgettable.[4] The film was commercially successful, grossing $262.5 million worldwide against a $75–80 million budget. A sequel was discussed but never produced due to the studio's heavier focus on its flagship franchise, Ice Age.[5]

  1. ^ "Robots (US domestic version)". British Board of Film Classification. Archived from the original on February 2, 2017. Retrieved January 22, 2017.
  2. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference mojo was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ "Robots (2005) - Financial Information". The Numbers.
  4. ^ "Robots". Metacritic.
  5. ^ "Robots pushes animation envelope". September 16, 2005.