Mike Thurmeier, the Canadian animator who co-directed Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs with Brazilian-American Carlos Saldanha, is amazed at how a modest cartoon joined the big boys.

The box-office numbers are shocking. A breezy cartoon, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, is near the top on the list of megahit movies of 2009.

While just seventh in North America, Ice Age 3 is second worldwide. It trails only David Yates' Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince -- by a narrow margin. It has earned more worldwide than Michael Bay's gonzo thriller, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

The Canadian animator who co-directed Dawn of the Dinosaurs with Brazilian-American Carlos Saldanha is amazed at how a modest cartoon joined the big boys. "It is staggering," the Regina-born, New York-based Mike Thurmeier tells Sun Media, "to a point where I can't even begin to fathom how that happened!"

By yesterday, according to Box Office Mojo, score $928.6 million worldwide for Harry Potter 6, $878.4 million for Ice Age 3 and $832.7 million for Transformers 2. "How is this possible?" Thurmeier says on a return visit to Canada. "This will never happen to me again, I'm sure!"

Now the three will battle it out on DVD and Blu-ray. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen debuted last week. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs arrives tomorrow. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is set for Dec. 8.

For Ice Age 3, the basic DVD is a single-disc, widescreen version with extras limited to a Saldanha-led group commentary, with Thurmeier involved. There is also a two-pack with Ice Age 3 and The Scrat Pack of shorts. The Blu-ray combo pack is the best choice, even if you don't own a Blu-ray player yet. You get the basic DVD plus the high-def Blu-ray plus a digital copy. The Blu-ray extras are wildly extensive: The commentary, making-of docs, a music video, BD Live plus all the Scrat shorts featuring the beloved sabre-toothed squirrel. That includes Thurmeier's Oscar-nominated, No Time for Nuts (2006), co-directed with Chris Renaud.

Thurmeier graduated from the animation program at Ontario's famed Sheridan College a dozen years ago. He then joined Blue Sky Studios, responsible for the Ice Age franchise as well as Horton Hears a Who!, on which Thurmeier served as senior supervising animator. Dawn of the Dinosaurs is his feature-length directorial debut. And he was worried.

"I knew going in that it was going to be a hard sell to some people," Thurmeier says. "But 'the attitude' is interesting. It is different in North America than in the rest of the world. It seems like, everywhere outside of North America, people love sequels. They embrace them. They look forward to sequels. Here, there seems to be a negative connotation to it. So it's interesting and I was worried.

"There are people who think it is just a money-printing machine and we're just going to bang them out and laugh and reap the box-office rewards. But, honestly, at Blue Sky, everybody puts their whole heart into making them. It's not just some side project while we're working on other stuff. The entire machinery of the studio -- our best artists, our best animators -- they're all working to make the best thing we can. It is not an afterthought. It is really an intense production, like an original film would be."

The filmmakers did take a hit for including dinosaurs in the Paleolithic era. But even the mammoths voiced by Queen Latifah and Ray Romano discuss the notion that dinos should be extinct. Ice Age 3 indulges in the ruse of The Lost World, or its modern equivalent, Jurassic Park.

"We're talking about talking mammoths," Thurmeier says with a grin. "We're not trying to be scientifically accurate."

But they were trying to be funny and sweet and engaging and a little crazy. "My personal inspiration is Chuck Jones and Warner Bros.," Thurmeier says. "The cartoon world and the real world can co-exist!"