Ice Age: The Meltdown is the 2006 film sequel to the computer-animated 2002 film Ice Age. It was produced by Blue Sky Studios for 20th Century Fox, and was released in theatres March 31, 2006. It is directed by Carlos Saldanha, co-director of the original Ice Age.

Taglines:

Kiss your nuts goodbye (Picture of Scrat with acorn)
The countdown to the meltdown will begin.
The chill is gone.
Kiss your ice goodbye.
The pack is back.
A new age is coming.
He never thaw it coming.

In the opening scene, the Ice Age critters are having a ball in their new world full of tar pits and geysers. However, global warming had caused a flood, and it is kept from destroying the valley only by the glaciers, which have formed a dam. Time is running out, and as soon as a vulture tells the animals a boat can lead them to safety, they set off to find it.

Along the way, Manny becomes depressed when other animals (especially Sid) tease him about being the last mammoth alive. Manny wishes to be alone, leaving Diego and Sid to follow two annoying opossums. Manny comes across the opossum’s “sister”, a female mammoth named Ellie who believes she is an opossum. Manny has a hard time convincing her she is a mammoth, a task he must perform if they are to save the species from extinction.

Along the way, Sid finds out that Diego is afraid of water; Cretaceous, a prehistoric crocodile creature from the Mesozoic and Maelstrom, a prehistoric fish from the Paleozoic, plan to eat the critters in the meltdown; Scrat, a squirrel-rat mix who is desperate for an acorn, inadvertently diverts the meltdown and saves the valley. Manny saves Ellie from drowning, while Diego overcomes his fear of water to save Sid.

In the final scene, a herd of mammoths shows up, removing the need for Manny and Ellie to mate; however, love triumphs and they decide to remain together anyway.

The epilog shows Scrat having a near death experience after falling off the crack he has opened (which diverted the flood and saved the animals). He enters a heaven full of acorns. He sees a gigantic acorn, reaches for it and nearly grabs it. Suddenly, he finds himself torn away from heaven. He wakes up in the arms of Sid, who had resuscitated him, and proceeds to attack his savior.

As an additional marketing ploy a special "anti-cell" spot was created with Sid complaining to the audience about a ringing cellular phone. The same was done for Brother Bear, I, Robot, and Robots.

Burger King Ice Age: The Meltdown Toys

On Family Guy's episode Sibling Rivalry, In one scene, Scrat is shown trying to take 3 nuts out of a side of a glacier, in which Peter shows up and tries to stop him. Apart from Peter, the scene was done in 3D, and Scrat was voiced by Chris Wedge who voices him in the films. The episode originally aired the week before the film opened. Fox aired promotions for the movie throughout the evening.

A teaser trailer for The Simpsons Movie was attached to the movie on some prints.

The film opened on March 31, 2006, and exceeded expectations by opening with an estimated 70.5 million dollars in it's first weekend, the second biggest opening for a non-summer non-holiday release, after The Passion of the Christ.