Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is an American media franchise produced by Sony Pictures Animation and loosely based on the book of the same name by Judi Barrett. The franchise began with the 2009 film Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. The films have received generally positive reviews from critics. The series has grossed $517 million at the box office.
The franchise revolves around Flint Lockwood, a genius inventor who invents the FLDSMDFR, a device that creates food out of water. Despite its success, the device's power unintentionally creates havoc and natural disasters of which Flint and his friends have to stop.
Flint Lockwood, a young failed inventor, builds a machine that can turn water into food and calls it the Flint Lockwood Diatomic Super Mutating Dynamic Food Replicator, or FLDSMDFR for short. The townspeople of Swallow Falls, a tiny island that had nothing but sardines for food, benefit from the food weather that the machine brings, until the foods increase in size and the weather becomes unstable. Flint eventually loses all control of the FLDSMDFR and must shut it down before the world is destroyed.
After having seemingly destroyed the FLDSMDFR, Flint Lockwood is determined to prove himself a great inventor. He is given the chance by his idol Chester V, who informs him that his machine survived and has turned the island of Swallow Falls into a dangerous, tropical jungle full of sentient food creatures based on existing animals. Flint teams up with his friends and they return to the island to shut down the machine. When they realize that Chester V has his own plans for them, they set off to stop him and protect the foodimals.
In September 2023, Phil Lord stated that a script was completed for a third installment before the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike, entitled Planet of the Grapes.
On October 9, 2014, DHX Media announced that it would develop and produce a television series based on the film franchise, titled Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, released on March 6, 2017 in the United States and April 6 of the same year in Canada. The series is traditionally animated and consists of 26 22-minute episodes. It takes place before the first film, showing Flint Lockwood as a high school student who dreams to become a serious scientist. In his adventures, he is joined by Sam Sparks, a new girl in town and the school's "wannabe" reporter, along with Flint's dad Tim, Steve the Monkey, Manny as the head of the school's audiovisual club, Earl as a school gym teacher, Brent as a baby wear model, and mayor Shelbourne. DHX Media handles the global television and non-US home entertainment distribution, along with worldwide merchandising rights, while Sony distributes home entertainment in the US. Commissioned by Teletoon in Canada, the series airs on Cartoon Network in the United States, and on the Boomerang channel in other territories.
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