SpongeBob SquarePants is a lively American television series created by marine science educator and animator Stephen Hillenburg for Nickelodeon. The series chronicles the adventures and efforts of the title character and his various friends in the underwater fiction city of Bikini Bottom. The popularity of the series has transformed it into a media franchise, as well as the largest rated air series ever on Nickelodeon, and the MTV networks ‘ most distributed property. At the end of 2017, the media franchise generated $13 billion in the merchandising revenue for Nickelodeon.
Many of the ideas for the series originated in an unprecedented educational comic entitled The intertidal zone, which Hillenburg created in 1989. He began developing SpongeBob SquarePants on a 1996 television series on the cancellation of the modern life of Rocko, and approached Tom Kenny, who had worked with him in this series, to express the title character. SpongeBob was originally going to be called SpongeBob, and the series was going to be called SpongeBob, but both were altered, since the name was already registered trademark.
Nickelodeon held a preliminary version of the series in the United States on May 1, 1999, after the television broadcast of the 1999 Kids ‘ Choice Awards. The series was officially released on July 17, 1999. He has received critical acclaiming all over the world since his debut and gained enormous popularity for his second season. A feature film, the film SpongeBob SquarePants, was released in theaters on November 19, 2004, and a sequel was released on February 6, 2015. In 2018, the series began to emit its twelfth season.