Wednesday, June 06, 2018

Nickelodeon and Paramount's Third 'SpongeBob' Movie Gets Title, Release Date [Updated]

Just a few months after reports of a delay, the next installment of SpongeBob SquarePants movies has a new name and a new release date!


ComicBook.com was in attendance at CinemaCon 2018 in Las Vegas when Paramount Animation revealed that the upcoming third SpongeBob SquarePants movie will officially be called The SpongeBob Movie: It's a Wonderful Sponge and is set to open in theaters on Wednesday, July 22, 2020. The film will be the third in the series of SpongeBob SquarePants theatrical releases, with The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie having been released in 2004 and its sequel, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, in 2015. SpongeBob TV series writer Tim Hill (Muppets from Space, Garfield 2, Hop, and the first Alvin and the Chipmunks feature) is penning the script and directing the film. Hill has been involved with Spongebob Squarepants from day one, helping to develop the series, and has worked on the series off and on throughout the years.

The presentation also included clips from Wonder Park (due out March 15, 2019) with a live performance of "Wonder," an original song from the film, by Rachel Platten.

Update (6/6): Vincent Waller, the Creative Director on SpongeBob SquarePants, has revealed in a Tweet that SpongeBob SquarePants writer Aaron Springer is working on the story for The SpongeBob Movie: It's a Wonderful Sponge, and that he has heard that SBSP storyboard director Zeus Cervas has been brought on board to help storyboard the film!

Last May development of the third feature-length SpongeBob film was announced with release anticipated in 2019. In December, however, Paramount announced that film -- then being called The SpongeBob Movie -- was being pushed back a year. Now it looks like things are back on track. The studio even shared a first look at the movie's logo during their presentation at CinemaCon. You can check that out above!

Both The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie and The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water were box office successes for the studio, bringing in a combined $465.3 million on a budget of $104 million between the two films.

Since its launch in July 1999, SpongeBob SquarePants has emerged as a pop culture phenomenon. The series has been the most-watched animated program with kids 2-11 for more than 15 consecutive years, and over the past several years, it has averaged more than 100,000,000 total viewers every quarter across all Nickelodeon networks. SpongeBob SquarePants is the most widely distributed property in Viacom International Media Networks history, seen in more than 208 countries and territories and translated in 55+ languages. The Paramount Pictures feature film The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water premiered Feb. 6, 2015, landing at #1 opening weekend. The character-driven cartoon chronicles the nautical and sometimes nonsensical adventures of SpongeBob, an incurably optimistic and earnest sea sponge, and his undersea friends in the fictional underwater city of Bikini Bottom. Among those friends are SpongeBob's best friend, a pink starfish named Patrick Star, his neighbor and co-worker octopus Squidward Tentacles, and Sandy Cheeks, a squirrel from Texas.

SpongeBob SquarePants has been renewed through to at least the show's twelfth season, will be celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2019, and also has its own critically acclaimed Broadway show.

Paramount also revealed first-looks at the logos of their upcoming live-action Dora the Explorer and Are You Afraid of the Dark? movies at CinemaCon 2018!

More Nick: Plot Of Nickelodeon Movies' 'Wonder Park' Revealed!

Originally published: Thursday, April 26, 2018.

H/T: Konbini; Additional sources: The Hollywood Reporter, Cartoon Brew, ToonZone Forums /@SweetShop209, IMDb (I, II).
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