Cars (franchise)

Cars is a 2006 animated film produced by Pixar Animation Studiosand released by Walt Disney Pictures and the last film for the Buena Vista Pictures Distribution company and directed by John Lasseterand co-directed by the late Joe Ranft. It was the seventhDisney/Pixar feature film, and the final film by Pixar before it was bought by Disney. The soundtrack of the film features music bySheryl Crow, Rascal Flatts, James Taylor, Brad Paisley, Chuck Berry and John Mayer. Set in a world populated entirely by anthropomorphic cars and other vehicles, it features the voices ofOwen Wilson, Paul Newman, Bonnie Hunt, Larry the Cable Guy,Tony Shalhoub, John Ratzenberger, George Carlin, Jenifer Lewis,Cheech Marin, Richard Petty and Michael Keaton as well as cameos by several celebrities such as Jeremy Clarkson.

It was nominated for two Academy Awards, including Best Animated Feature, and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film. It was released on DVD on November 7, 2006, on a Disney Movie Club exclusive VHS in 2007 (which is extremely rare) and on Blu-ray Disc on November 6, 2007, making this the last Disney film to be released on VHS. Related merchandise, including scale models of several of the cars, broke records for retail sales of merchandise based on a Disney/Pixar film, with an estimated $5 billion in sales.

A sequel, Cars 2, was released in theaters on June 24, 2011. A third Cars film is currently in production as of 2014.