A prehistorical glaciological event may not seem like a premise on which to build a successful franchise of family films – it's certainly not as obvious as anything involving princesses or other familiar fairy tale staples – yet for almost ten years, the Ice Age films have been a reliable mainstay in animated features, generating more than $4 billion in box office, home entertainment, and merchandising sales.  2002's Ice Age cast three very different comedians, Ray Romano, Denis Leary, and John Leguizamo as a mammoth, a saber-toothed tiger, and a sloth who form a makeshift family.

After two theatrical sequels, that makeshift family has expanded dramatically, and in time-honored tradition, the animated characters that audiences know and love are starring in their own half-hour Christmas special, Ice Age: A Mammoth Christmas.  The holiday special, which arrived on Blu-ray and DVD last week, finds Sid the Sloth venturing to the North Pole in order to remove himself from Santa's naughty list after destroying the beloved Christmas decorations of Manny the Mammoth.

Ray Romano, he of the much-loved series Everybody Loves Raymond, was kind enough to talk with IAR and several other international entertainment journalists about the Ice Age holiday special, as well as next summer's theatrical sequel, Ice Age: Continental Drift, a 3D adventure from Blue Sky Studios and 20th Century Fox that follows the Arctic herd as their home continent breaks apart. 

The first animated Ice Age tale came about almost a decade ago, in 2002, and while it was an enjoyable tale of anthropomorphized prehistoric animals banding together as unlikely buddies and making it through an epochal cold-snap together, you wouldn't be wrong for not expecting it to spawn a viable franchise with two sequels in the can and another on the way for next summer.  The 2006 sequel, Ice Age: The Meltdown, found the gang heading for high ground as the ice turns to water, and 2009's Ice Age: Rise of the Dinosaurs found the tangling with, you know, dinosaurs.

Ice Age: Continental Drift sees the main characters trying to keep it together as Pangea, the massive unified continent, drifts apart into the seven continents as we know them.  The first teaser poster for the new film predictably employs the long-toothed squirrel Scrat once again in pursuit of an acorn, this time on a makeshift sailboat.

Synopsis: When a massive power blackout causes the population to inexplicably vanish, a small handful of survivors band together inside a desolate tavern struggling to survive as the darkness hones in on them. From director Brad Anderson ("The Machinist," "Transsiberian") comes an apocalyptic thriller with a terrifying vision of our world's end and a story that wrestles with the nature of existence itself.