As summer’s box office heat wave continues, don’t expect “Ice Age: Continental Drift” to provide the chill factor. Fox’s four-quel is set to turn up the temperature and take the #1 spot by default, as Blue Sky’s animated flick is the only new wide release in multiplexes. Yup, it's "Ice, Ice Baby..." all weekend long. 

With most of Hollywood in San Diego attending fanboy Christmas— aka Comic-Con—it’s no surprise that the industry is placing the box office on cruise control while continuing to bottle up the hype that will bust out when “The Dark Knight Rises” smashes into theatres next Friday and smacks around the box office like a rag doll—or like Loki, if you prefer. Doubtful it will reach the mighty $207 million “The Avengers” deployed with, but it’s gonna be a positively batty box office, nonetheless…$180+ million.   

Ok, gotta put the bat-buzz in deep freeze for one more weekend. “Ice Age,” as a franchise, has frozen worldwide assets totaling nearly $2 billion through its three previous installments, and most impressively of all, it continues to gain traction on a global basis, totaling $383 million, $655 million, and $886 million, respectively.

In fact, on foreign soil, “Ice Age” is a box office beast, with the threequel, “Dawn of the Dinosaurs,” hitting a series high $690 million—accounting for over 77% of its worldwide gross. “Continental Drift” has already made $212 million internationally, easily eclipsing the domestic total of each film separately, which have gotten very close, but never topped $200 million in three attempts.  

With “Brave” and “Madagascar 3” winding down, Fox picked a perfect time to thaw out their latest installment, as it chills in 3,800+ igloos this weekend, and likely swimming away with close to $60 million.

Top 5 Weekend Estimates

1.  Ice Age: Continental Drift - $58M

2. Spider-Man - $28M

3. Ted - $20M

4. Brave - $11M

5. Savages - $8M