Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie

Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie
Directed by	Liza Johnson
Written by	Tom Stern (teleplay) Kaz (teleplay/story)
Produced by	Robert Engelman
Executive Producer(s)	Marc Ceccarelli Vincent Waller
Starring	Carolyn Lawrence Tom Kenny Clancy Brown Bill Fagerbakke Rodger Bumpass Johnny Knoxville Craig Robinson Grey DeLisle Ilia Isorelýs Paulino Marty Cardarople Wanda Sykes
Cinematography	Greg Gardiner
Edited by	Billy Weber Matthew Feinman
Music by	Moniker
Production companies	Nickelodeon Movies
Distributed by	Netflix
Release date	August 2, 2024
Running time	1 hour, 26 minutes
Film rating	PG
Preceded by	The Casagrandes Movie The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run
Followed by	Plankton (film)

Saving Bikini Bottom- The Sandy Cheeks Movie - Official Trailer - Netflix

Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie is a film based on SpongeBob SquarePants that premiered on Netflix.

Plot

The film opens with Sandy stepping out of her treedome, then singing a song about herself. She rides her robot horse, Sparky, around town while analyzing pieces of sea life for her marine biology career. She stops in front of Conch Street, where SpongeBob comes out to show her a jellyfishing technique he has been practicing. Suddenly, a giant claw descends upon the town. Sandy takes SpongeBob to safety, but Sparky loses his back half. SpongeBob watches in horror as Patrick, Gary, and all his friends are lifted up out of the ocean. Sandy uses binoculars to see a logo for B.O.O.T.S., a lab based in Galveston, Texas, which she works for.

As SpongeBob cries, Sandy contacts her fellow scientists as B.O.O.T.S., Kyle and Phoebe. However, the transmission reveals that her lab has now been affiliated with Gushing Falls Water Park, Sea Pals toys, and is now managed by Sue Nahmee, with the message then being cut off. Sandy decides to go to Texas with SpongeBob to see what is really happening, and the two ride a thermal vent up to the surface. They take a ride on the wing of a passing plane until they pass over Galveston, at which point Sandy glides like a flying squirrel and brings SpongeBob to the ground.

Back in B.O.O.T.S., the Bikini Bottom citizens are frightened, realizing they are now trapped in a tank of water. Mr. Krabs goes out to investigate and comes in contact with Phoebe, making him panic and tell the others what he has found. Phoebe and Kyle use the computer to ensure everyone is in the tank, only to be told that SpongeBob and Sandy are missing. Sue enters, with her own rap theme song, and pampers her mutant pet fish, Fishy.

Meanwhile, SpongeBob and Sandy are ganged up on by a group of evil rattlesnakes. They try to fight them off, but when Sandy is poisoned, she realizes she needs to call for help. Using a special whistle, she summons her family, consisting of her mother, father, grandmother, brother Randy, and twins Rowdy and Rosie. The family use various circus tricks to defeat the snakes, and Ma cures Sandy of her poison. They prepare for a road trip, but Sandy explains to her family why she has come back to Texas.

Sue explains to her employees the goal of her experiment: as a way to make fish a more popular pet, she is launching a Sea Pals toy line, with SpongeBob being the flagship of it. The phases are to feed the Bikini Bottomites paste to enable genetic modification, modify them to breathe on land, then clone and sell them. She orders Kyle and Phoebe to find begin phase one, and find SpongeBob.

Later that night, SpongeBob hangs out with Randy, who helps him fix the Cheeks family car. Sandy reminisces on her days at the circus, which she acted when she was younger while doing a waterski act. Over breakfast, Ma tells Sandy that they are okay with her not being in the circus as long as she stays in Texas, to Sandy's hesitation. However, SpongeBob and Randy soon arrive, lightening the mood.

Meanwhile, Plankton and Karen overhear that the Bikini Bottomites will be cloned. Karen points out that Plankton's own cloning machines have never worked, so Plankton is excited that he might finally be cloned successfully. The Bottomites eat the genetic modification paste. After this, Mr. Krabs, Patrick, and Squidward are put in tubes that modify them to breathe air. Plankton is disappointed that he was not chosen and walks back to the Chum Bucket. Squidward rejoices with a song, and a test with two children proves the popularity of Sea Pals.

The Cheeks family get back on the road, but they are chased by the police since Randy has loaded up stolen nuts in the van. They attempt to escape using a tornado, but are still followed. When they realize they are close to Galveston, Pa loads SpongeBob and Sandy in a cannon and fires them away. Then land in Gushing Falls, where Sue's dog, Cuda, chases them around as they search for the lab. They run from the dog, going through the sewers and winding up in the sink of the B.O.O.T.S laboratory. SpongeBob recognizes his friends and reunites with Gary, Mr. Krabs, Squidward, and Patrick.

Kyle takes SpongeBob and prepares to clone him. Sandy confronts Sue, but she is picked up by her and locked in a cage. Giving a monologue, Sue reveals her lifelong affinity for fish, and how she always wanted to keep one as a pet. After her body was eaten by piranhas, she was forced to move her head onto a robot, revealing her true form. Sue reveals that Sandy's own research has allowed the Sea Pals plan to become a reality, saddening her and making her friends lose faith in her.

SpongeBob is put into the cloning machine and split into thousands of tinier versions of himself. Krabs distracts Sue, as her dog runs and tips over the machine. The tiny SpongeBobs run around the lab. One comes up to Sandy and gives her a pep talk, pointing out how much she matters to them and saying that they count her as family. Kyle and Phoebe, realizing that Sue has mistreated them, help Sandy escape by lining up her tank as she runs in her hamster wheel.

Sandy takes down Sue, knocking her robot head off her body. It flies into the mouth of Fishy, at which point she realizes she has technically become a fish herself, satisfying her. Squidward, Sandy, Krabs, and Patrick learn that the miniature SpongeBobs can be squished together to reassemble the real one. Sandy tells them they have to get Bikini Bottom back into the each, and she and SpongeBob realize they can get the Cheeks family to help. Sandy lost a tooth from the fight against Sue, leaving her unable to whistle, so SpongeBob does it instead.

When Sandy's family arrives, everyone teams up to build a device using Sparky's parts that will propel the tank back to Bikini Bottom. With the power of everyone running to charge it, an electrical blast launches it back into Bikini Bottom and the glass shatters, restoring everything. The Cheeks family move their circus underwater, holding a special show in the Krusty Krab. Sandy joins her family in a song, doing circus acts as her friends watch in amazement. Kyle, Phoebe, and Cuda have been shrunken down their size to watch and given water suits, while Sue herself swims as a part of Fishy.

Characters

• SpongeBob SquarePants
• Sandy Cheeks
• Patrick Star
• Squidward Tentacles
• Eugene H. Krabs
• Pearl Krabs
• Mrs. Puff
• Gary the Snail
• Larry the Lobster
• Background charcaters
  • Fred
• Ma Cheeks
• Pa Cheeks
• Randy Cheeks
• Fishy
• Granny Cheeks
• Sparky
• Sue Nahmee
• Rowdy Cheeks
• Rosie Cheeks

Production

Prototype logo.

On March 4, 2020, Robert Bakish announced that ViacomCBS would produce two feature-length SpongeBob SquarePants spin-off movies for Netflix, representing a "profitable, low-risk rental business with set margins," which he said translates to content ownership for separate distribution down the road, including consumer products and recreation.

"So, we're convinced that both an O&O [owned and operated] and a third-party studio strategy is absolutely right for ViacomCBS," Bakish said. "We believe that maximizing the value of our content asset, that is what you see us executing in 2020 and beyond."

When asked about any updates on the movies, Vincent Waller answered that they are in the writing stage as of January 23, 2021.

On May 20, 2021, it was announced that a hybrid movie featuring Sandy Cheeks was in development. Production was slated to start in August in New Mexico.

On August 12, 2021, the title of the movie was revealed as SpongeBob SquarePants: Saving Bikini Bottom.

On August 16, 2021, it was revealed that plans to film Saving Bikini Bottom in Los Alamos were scrapped due to rewrites of the script.

On August 26, 2021, Vincent Waller confirmed that the movie will be 3D animated with live-action segments.

On October 24, 2021, Vincent Waller confirmed that Warner Bros. Pictures isn't involved in the movie and that Netflix is the distributor.

Trivia

• This is the first SpongeBob film to become a spin-off.
• This is the fourth Nicktoon film to stream on Netflix, after The Loud House Movie, Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie, and The Casagrandes Movie.
• This is the first SpongeBob film to be released in August. (Not counting The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run) since that was released in Canada, instead of the United States.
• This is the second film to be released on August 2. After Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem.
• This is also the very first SpongeBob film to feature SpongeBob as the Deuteragonist.

Gallery

External links

• Encyclopedia SpongeBobia: Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie