Nick Frost, JB Smoove, Nicki Minaj join voice cast of Ice Age: Continental Drift

Blue Sky Studios is fairly young when it comes to producing feature length films, only having begun to do so in 2002. But in that short amount of time, they've had incredible success crafting blockbuster hits on relatively small budgets. Out of the six films they've released, none have had one that made less than $260M(2005's Robots), and no budgets exceeding $90M. That's pretty damn good. The centerpiece of Blue Sky's strategy has been the vastly successful Ice Age franchise, which through three films has grossed just shy of $2B worldwide. The fourth film in the series, Continental Drift, is on the way, and already the voice talent involved could make it the biggest one yet.

Variety reports a number of new voices have just been added to he mix. Joy Behar, R&B singer Nicki Minaj, JM Smoove, Nick Frost, Alan Tudyk, Heather Morris, Josh Gad, Kunal Nayyar and Alain Chabat have joined the prehistoric animated feature. They'll join the already established cast of Ray Romano, Queen Latifah, Wanda Sykes, Denis Leary, John Lequizamo, Jeremy Renner, Sean William Scott, Aziz Ansari, Keke Palmer, Jennifer Lopez, Drake and Josh Peck.

As seen in the very funny short film, Continental Crack-Up, Scrat(the crazy squirrel seen in all the movies) and his pursuit of an acorn leads to a major reshaping of the entire world. This reformation of the planet's land masses gives Sid(Romano) the opportunity to reconnect with his long lost family. The rest of the gang tries to find their own way home, despite run-ins with a wide assortment of trouble making characters. Steve Martino and Mike Thurmeier will be co-directing.