The search is on. The official trailer for the latest SpongeBob offering, The SpongeBob Movie: Search For Squarepants, has officially hit above sea level direct from Paramount — and needless to say, this looks like another fun ride with our favorite sponge.
The sneak peek is full of jokes, charm, and intriguing story, as well as some really cool animation, which has been a consistent part of the SpongeBob film franchise since 2015’s The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water.
One interesting thing about the trailer, though, is that it highlights the acting debut of none other than Ice Spice, one of the most popular rappers of the last few years. The musician, known for her short curly red hair, appears briefly in the trailer in what seems to be a cameo role — but you can’t miss her, between her recognizable voice and her hair, which her character also rocks.
The official synopsis for the film reads, “Desperate to be a big guy, SpongeBob sets out to prove his bravery to Mr. Krabs by following The Flying Dutchman — a mysterious swashbuckling ghost pirate — on a seafaring comedy-adventure that takes him to the deepest depths of the deep sea, where no Sponge has gone before.”
This is the fourth film in the SpongeBob franchise, which started with 2004’s hit film The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie. Despite the excellent box office showing — over $140 million globally on a budget of $30 million — Paramount and Nickelodeon didn’t go forward with another SpongeBob movie until over a decade later. The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water was released in 2015, and then five years after that, the third installment The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run was released.
SpongeBob SquarePants was created by animator and writer Stephen Hillenburg in 1999. Hillenburg died nearly 20 years later in 2018.
The SpongeBob Movie: Search For SquarePants will arrive in theaters on December 19, and will surely come to Paramount+ sometime after that, but there’s no official streaming release date just yet.
Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.
