2015 film by Paul Tibbitt
The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water is a 2015 American live-action animated adventure comedy film based on the television series SpongeBob SquarePants. It is the second theatrical film based on the series. Directed by series veteran Paul Tibbitt, the film stars the show's regular voice cast alongside Antonio Banderas in a live-action role, and Matt Berry as a new character. The plot follows Burger Beard, a pirate who steals the Krabby Patty secret formula using a magical book that makes any text written upon it come true, leading SpongeBob and his friends to travel to the ocean's surface to confront Burger Beard and retrieve the formula.
The film was written by Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger, adapted from a story by Tibbitt and SpongeBob creator Stephen Hillenburg. As with the first film, the final act places the animated characters in a live-action world. These scenes were directed by Mike Mitchell and were filmed in Savannah and Tybee Island, Georgia. Filming began in September 2013, and was completed in November that year. The film is dedicated to Ernest Borgnine, the voice of Mermaid Man, who died in 2012. It also features the final film role of Tim Conway, the voice of Barnacle Boy, who died in 2019.
The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water was released in the United States on February 6, 2015, by Paramount Pictures. It received generally positive reviews from critics, and was a box office success, earning $325 million against its $74 million budget, and becoming the highest-grossing film in the series. A third film, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run, was released in 2020, and a fourth, The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants, was released in 2025.
Plot summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.