Deadpool and Joker star Zazie Beetz has joined the cast of Extinct, an upcoming, animated feature that will also star Community‘s Ken Jeong, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend‘s Rachel Bloom, and Pitch Perfect‘s Adam DeVine. The film, which will be a U.S./China co-production, is being driven by talent from The Simpsons, with David Silverman (The Simpsons Movie) directing and writers Joel Cohen, John Frink, and Rob LaZebnik on board. Variety, who broke the story, reports that the film comes from China Lion, HB Wink, Huayi Tencent Entertainment, and Tolerable Entertainment, and that Timeless Films has joined the fray and will handle international distribution, beginning with talking to potential buyers at the Toronto Film Festival.
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The voice cast will also include stand-up comedian Jim Jefferies, Christopher Guest veteran Catherine O’Hara (Schitt’s Creek), Reggie Watts (The Late Late Show With James Corden) and Alex Borstein (Family Guy).
There are few details on the film itself, although it apparently follows Op and Ed, two adorable donut-shaped animals — “flummels” — who accidentally time-travel from 1835 to modern-day Shanghai. There they discover traffic, trans fats, and worst of all, that flummels are now extinct. It’s up to this bumbling pair to save themselves and their species…and, just maybe, change the course of history.
The property seems likely to be stepping into the void left by Disney’s acquisition of Fox, whose Blue Sky Studios provided a lot of crowd-pleasing but less prestigious animated movies, compared to Disney’s critically-acclaimed fare. Disney has recently announced that they will be utilizing at least some of Blue Sky’s IP: a console game featuring Scrat, the studio’s recognizable mascot who originated in the Ice Age franchise, will be available soon from Outright Games.
“We are really looking forward to screening the first footage from this incredibly funny film to our distributors at Toronto,” said Timeless CEO and chairman Ralph Kamp on Extinct.
Yanming Jiang, Joe Aguilar and Matthew Berkowitz are producing the film, which is in production at Cinesite in Montreal and is slated for a 2020 theatrical release.
