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. Plot In Rivet Town, Rodney Copperbottom, son of Herb and Lydia Copperbottom, is an aspiring young inventor. He idolizes Bigweld, a famous inventor, entrepreneur, and philanthropist whose company, Bigweld Industries, hires other inventors and provides robots with spare parts. Following Bigweld's example to "see a need, fill a need", Rodney develops a small, flying robot, named Wonderbot, to assist his father, Herb, who works as a dishwasher at a restaurant. When Herb's supervisor Mr. Gunk confronts them, Wonderbot malfunctions and wreaks havoc in the kitchen. To help Herb pay for the damages, Rodney decides to move to Robot City, hoping to present Wonderbot to Bigweld Industries. Upon his arrival, Rodney is ejected from Bigweld Industries by the company's current head Phineas T. Ratchet, who, in Bigweld's absence, has stopped producing spare parts and inventions in favor of expensive "upgrades", thereby "outmoding" robots who are unable or unwilling to pay for them. Meanwhile, Ratchet's mother, Madame Gasket, runs the Chop Shop, a facility that collects scrap and spare parts (and sometimes outmoded robots) and recycles them into ingots for Upgrades. After failing to get into Bigweld Industries, Rodney befriends Fender Pinwheeler, a ne'er-do-well he met at the train station. Fender takes him in to a boarding home populated by other outmodes, known collectively as the "Rusties". Word of Rodney's mechanical prowess spreads, and he is hailed as a local hero after he and the Rusties fix