Krabs, SpongeBob, Squidward, Gary, Patrick, and Mrs. Top row, from left to right: Pearl, Plankton, and Karen. A Broadway musical based on it opened in 2017 to critical acclaim. SpongeBob SquarePants has won a variety of awards including six Annie Awards, eight Golden Reel Awards, four Emmy Awards, 20 Kids' Choice Awards, and two BAFTA Children's Awards. As of February 2022, four additional films are planned: three character spinoff films for Paramount+ and Netflix, and a new theatrical SpongeBob film. Two spin-off series, Kamp Koral: SpongeBob's Under Years and The Patrick Star Show, premiered in 2021. It has inspired three feature films: The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie (2004), Sponge Out of Water (2015), and Sponge on the Run (2020). The thirteenth season began in October 2020, and the series was renewed for a fourteenth season on March 24, 2022. It gained enormous popularity by its second season, and has subsequently received worldwide critical acclaim. The series officially premiered on July 17, 1999. Nickelodeon aired a preview for the series in the United States on May 1, 1999, after the airing of the 1999 Kids' Choice Awards. Puff and her boating school so SpongeBob could attend school as an adult. He was prepared to abandon the series, but compromised by creating Mrs. The network's executives wanted SpongeBob to be a child in school, but Hillenburg preferred SpongeBob to be an adult character. After Rocko was cancelled in 1996, he began developing SpongeBob SquarePants into a television series that same year and in 1997, a seven-minute pilot was pitched to Nickelodeon. Hillenburg joined Nickelodeon in 1992 as an artist on Rocko's Modern Life. Many of the series's ideas originated in The Intertidal Zone, an unpublished educational comic book Hillenburg created in 1989 to teach his students about undersea life. It is the highest rated Nickelodeon series and the most profitable property for Paramount Consumer Products, generating over $13 billion in merchandising revenue as of 2019. The fifth-longest-running American animated series, its high popularity has made it a media franchise. It chronicles the adventures of the title character and his aquatic friends in the fictional underwater city of Bikini Bottom. SpongeBob SquarePants (or simply SpongeBob) is an American animated comedy television series created by marine science educator and animator Stephen Hillenburg for Nickelodeon.

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