Carlos Saldanha

Carlos Saldanha is a busy and long-term Brazilian-born animation director, writer, and executive producer for Blue Sky Studios and 20^th Century Fox, beginning as a supervising animator on the animated sequence in director-writer John Payson’s musical black comedy for Warner Bros., Joe’s Apartment (1996), with Jerry O’Connell and Megan Ward.

Saldanha was a creative supervisor for the animated sequences in the Michael Ritchie-directed children’s fantasy movie, A Simple Wish (1997), with Martin Short, Amanda Plummer, and Kathleen Turner, and a box-office dud for Universal Pictures. Saldanha stepped up to co-director (with Chris Wedge) on the inaugural feature in the highly successful Ice Age franchise, Ice Age (2002), directed by Chris Wedge, with the voices of Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Jack Black, Cedric the Entertainer, Stephen Root, and Jane Krakowski, and grossing $383.2 million worldwide.

Saldanha was director of the subsequent sequels Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006) and Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009), and then Saldanha was executive producer of the succeeding sequels, Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012) and Ice Age: Collision Course (2016), all of which earned an accumulated global box office return of $2.8 billion.

Carlos Saldanha was director-writer of the animated 20^th Century Fox-Blue Sky Studios double-play, Rio (2011) and Rio 2 (2014), both inspired by his hometown and starring the voices of Anne Hathaway, Jesse Eisenberg, Jemaine Clement, Leslie Mann, George Lopez, Jamie Foxx, Kristin Chenoweth, will.i.am, Bruno Mars, Rita Moreno, Tracy Morgan, and Andy Garcia, and grossing a cumulative box office return of $982 million.

Saldanha was director/executive producer of 20^th Century Fox/Blue Sky Studio’s underperforming animated comedy, Ferdinand (2017), with the voices of John Cena, Kate McKinnon, Anthony Anderson, Bobby Cannavale, Peyton Manning, Gina Rodriguez, and Miguel Angel Silvestre, and delivering a bland $296 million gross (against $111 million costs).

Saldanha was executive producer on Blue Sky’s next animated features, Spies in Disguise (2019) and Nimona (2023), released after Blue Sky ceased operation in 2021. Saldanha returned to the director’s chair for Harold and the Purple Crayon (2024), his first post-Blue Sky feature produced by Columbia Pictures/Davis Entertainment/Scholastic Entertainment and based on Crockett Johnson’s 1955 children’s book, starring the voices of Zachary Levi, Lil Rei Howery, Jermaine Clement, Alfred Molina, and Zooey Deschanel, and released by Sony Pictures Releasing.