Live action/animation hybrid movies have a tendency to make a whole lot of money, with movies like Alvin and the Chimpmunks actually getting a full trilogy of films and the recently released The Smurfs 2 already making a good chunk of cash at the box office, and now it appears that it's a game that Paramount Pictures wants in on. According to Deadline, Paramount Animation is developing a new feature and it will reportedly be a hybrid move about Monster Trucks. Director Chris Wedge, who co-founded Blue Sky Studios and has spent most of his career working with Twentieth Century Fox, is reportedly now in final negotiations to helm the project.
It isn't exactly clear what the story of the movie is going to be, but apparently it's an original property and the studio hopes that it will "become a Transformers-like franchise" (which could suggest that the movie will have an action-heavy plot and/or that they plan to sell a shit-ton of toys modeled after the characters). Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger, the screenwriting duo behind the first two Kung Fu Panda movies for DreamWorks Animation and Paramount's upcoming Spongebob Squarepants film.
The studio is hoping that the movie will be part of their summer 2015 slate, which already features their upcoming Terminator reboot (which will be in theaters on June 26, 2015). The season already looks as though it will be one of the craziest of all time, featuring titles like Joss Whedon The Avengers: Age of Ultron, Zack Snyder's Batman vs. Superman movie, J.J. Abrams' Star Wars: Episode VII, Colin Trevorrow's Jurassic Park IV, Roland Emmerich's Independence Day 2, Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg's Pirates of the Caribbean 5 and more.
We first learned about Paramount Animation back in July 2011, as it was formed after DreamWorks Animation's distribution contract with Paramount ended and they moved on to work with Fox. Their Spongebob Squarepants movie, which is being directed by Paul Tibbitt, is said to be coming out some time next year, though an official release date hasn't been announced yet.
Outside of his directorial projects, which have included films like Epic, Robots and the first Ice Age, Wedge is a multi-hyphenate who also produces animated films and does a little big of voice-acting:
He also won an Oscar for the animated short film Bunny that he directed back in 1998:
