The Croods (franchise)

The Croods is a 2013 American computer-animated adventure comedy film produced by DreamWorks Animation and distributed by 20th Century Fox, set in a fictional prehistoric Pliocene era known as "The Croodaceous" (a prehistoric period which contains fictional prehistoric creatures) when a caveman's position as a "Leader of the Hunt" is threatened by the arrival of a prehistoric genius who comes up with revolutionary new inventions as they trek through a dangerous but exotic land in search of a new home.[1] The film was originally announced in May 2005, under the working title Crood Awakening,[2] originally a stop motion film being made by Aardman Animations.[3]

Chris Sanders took over development of the film in March 2007;[4] however, development of How to Train Your Dragon postponing its original schedule for a year to a then planned March 2012.[5] The film's final title, The Croods, was revealed in May 2009, along with new co-director, Kirk DeMicco.[6][7] The film features the voices of Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone, Ryan Reynolds, Catherine Keener, Clark Duke, Cloris Leachman, and Randy Thom.

The Croods: A New Age is a 2020 American sequel to the 2013 film The Croods, again produced by DreamWorks Animation and distributed by Universal Pictures, following the Croods after leaving their cave in the first film as they encounter their biggest threat since leaving the cave: another family called the Bettermans.[8]

The film was scheduled for a September 2020 release, but the release date was moved to November 25, 2020.[9] Along with the returning cast of the first film, the film features the voices of Peter Dinklage, Leslie Mann, and Kelly Marie Tran, Tran replacing Kat Dennings.[10]

A 2D-animated web television series prequel to the film, titled Dawn of the Croods, aired on Netflix between December 24, 2015[11] and July 7, 2017. A total of 88[12] episodes each consisting of 2 11-minute segments were released. The cast featured new voice actors for the characters of Grug (Dan Milano), Ugga (Cree Summer), Eep (Stephanie Lemelin), Thunk (A.J. Locascio), Sandy (Grey Griffin), Gran (Laraine Newman), and Guy (Dee Bradley Baker).[13] The first three episodes were animated in Toon Boom Harmony by Vancouver's Bardel Entertainment.[14][15] DreamWorks soon found that Harmony was not the best fit for animating scenes that contained multiple characters at once.[15] The rest of the episodes were traditionally hand-drawn by South Korean studios: EMation, NE4U, and Dong Woo Animation.[15] On July 9, 2017, executive producer Hay confirmed that the then recently-released fourth season of Dawn of the Croods had been its last.[16]