Barry Pepper Boards Monster Trucks

Paramount animation adds to its cast

Barry Pepper

by Phil de Semlyen |
Published on

An animation so secretive it could turn out to be the **Interstellar **of smashy-smashy car movies, Paramount's Monster Trucks doesn't even have a director formally attached yet. If, as seems likely, Blue Sky Studio co-founder Chris Wedge has taken the job, he'll be overseeing a cast that has just added Barry Pepper to its ranks.

Paramount is putting the gears in motion on the movie, which has had Kung Fu Panda's (and its sequel) scribes Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger at work on the script. The pair are also working on the SpongeBob SquarePants film for the studio.

Plot details are being kept under a giant truck's hood for now, but Amy Ryan will apparently be playing a single mother trying to make ends meet while raising her teenage son.

Director-in-waiting Wedge is the man behind 2002′s Ice Age. He directed and voiced Scrat in the film and its following sequels, which he also executive produced, and won a Best Animated Feature Oscar nomination for the movie, not to mention $2.8 billion in worldwide grosses. It's easy to see why Paramount seem ready to trust him with what it hopes will be a Cars-style franchise (only with much bigger tyres).

Pepper, everyone's favourite Bible-quoting sniper in Saving Private Ryan, has Kill The Messenger forthcoming with Jeremy Renner and romantic drama **The Devil’s Harvest **also on the cards.

Monster Trucks will be parking in your nearest cinema foyer on May 22, 2015

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