Hollywood is not always a place where the behavior is explainable, and Paramount Animation’s upcoming live action/CGI mash-up Monster Trucks is but one example of that madness. It’s not the head-shakingly simple subject matter I mean, but the fact that the pic already has a May 29, 2015 release date, even though it has yet to become officially greenlit. As such, the film can’t actually start casting its leads just yet, but if it could, the studio is looking at X-Men: First Class actor Lucas Till and Suburgatory’s Jane Levy to star. Can these young actors pull off a $100 million flick?
According to TheWrap, Paramount apparently isn’t happy with delaying the greenlight of one Monster Trucks film, but they’re already hoping this thing will turn into a franchise. It’s no surprise that they’ve got the Transformers series on their brains, as those are ridiculously lucrative movies, but they’re also hoping that it will have the heart of The Goonies. Way to keep your goals reasonable, guys.
Should they end up taking the roles, Till would play a character who is only described as a bad boy with a good heart, while Levy’s role is compared to what Tina Fey might have been like in high school. I’m really hoping both of these are human characters, as those would be inane descriptions for talking vehicles. Of course, they’re not much better when applied to real people, but I get that it’s early days and they can’t give a lot away just yet.
By the by, Till wasn’t the first to be looked at for this role. Paramount was also feeling out Prisoners’ Dylan Minnette and The Kings of Summer’s Nick Robinson. But Minnette signed up for Goosebumps and Robinson landed a part in Jurassic World, so Till it is, at least until he joins Star Wars: Episode VII or something.
Monster Trucks will be directed by Ice Age’s Chris Wedge, whose last film, Epic, sadly didn’t live up to its name. He’ll be working with a screenplay from writing partners Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger, who are responsible for Monsters vs. Aliens, as well as the sequels to Alvin and the Chipmunks and Kung Fu Panda. These three guys could make a really funny movie, though I wish that monster trucks weren’t involved.
Till has a line of films coming out in the next year or so, including Bryan Singer’s X-Men: Days of Future Past, where he’ll reprise the role of Havok. He’ll also be in a handful of thrillers like X-Men screenwriter David Hayter’s horror-iffic debut Wolves, Oliver Blackburn’s outcast horror Random, Gary Entin’s Sins of Our Youth and Derick Martini’s The Curse of Downers Grove, which was written by novelist Bret Easton Ellis.
Levy, who starred in last year’s Evil Dead remake, is still going strong as Tessa Altman four seasons into Suburgatory, with upcoming roles in the suicide-themed college drama About Alex and G. J. Echternkamp’s comedy Frank and Cindy.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to drive over a bunch of model cars while a giant fire-breathing robot walks around the yard.
