Robots is a 2005 American computer-animated science fiction adventure comedy film produced by Blue Sky Studios and distributed by 20th Century Fox. It was directed by Chris Wedge and written by David Lindsay-Abaire, Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel from a story by Ron Mita, Jim McClain and Lindsay-Abaire. It stars the voices of Ewan McGregor, Halle Berry, Greg Kinnear, Mel Brooks, Amanda Bynes, Drew Carey and Robin Williams. The story follows a robot named Rodney Copperbottom (McGregor) who seeks out his idol Bigweld (Brooks) at his company in Robot City, only to discover a plot by its new owner Ratchet (Kinnear) and his mother (Broadbent) to cheat older robots into buying expensive upgrades. Development on the film began in 2000, when Wedge and William Joyce failed to adapt Joyce's 1993 book Santa Calls and they decided to do a story on robots. Robots was theatrically released on March 11, 2005. It grossed $262.5 million worldwide against a $75 million budget and received generally positive reviews.