With Ice Age: Continental Drift the only wide release of the weekend, any wonder it’s number one? The fourth installment in Fox’s decade-old animated franchise took in an estimated $46 million from 3,881 locations. That’s a bit below the average debut of the first three Ice Age films and noticeably lower than this year’s other animated hits; but with international numbers steering the sequel past $300 million global by Sunday, no one at Fox is sweating the small stuff.

20th Century Fox has officially announced Ice Age 4 is moving forward and it’ll get released on July 13, 2012.  Tentatively titled Ice Age: Continental Drift, the 3D animated movie was a given after the third film, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, made almost $900 million at the worldwide box office.

In fact, while some sequels make less than the previous film, each Ice Age installment has made more money than the one before.  The original Ice Age made $383 million (worldwide), Ice Age: The Meltdown made $655 (worldwide), and I’ve already said the last one almost $900 million.  That’s a staggering amount of money for a third film.

The other interesting note is the Ice Age movies have been getting released every three years since 2002.  Using simple math, it’s safe to assume Ice Age 5 will hit theaters in 2015.