Billions actress Malin Akerman may unleash a hoard of skyscraping monsters in Rampage, the New Line video game movie hailing from San Andreas dream team Brad Peyton and Dwayne Johnson.
Negotiations between actress and studio are ongoing, according to The Hollywood Reporter, but we understand New Line is courting Akerman for the movie’s power-mongering villainess, a “calculating head of a tech company that is behind the monsters.” Those creatures – one gorilla, one crocodile and a wolf – are the grossly mutated results of a lab experiment gone awry, and when the fate of the world hangs in the balance, Dwayne Johnson’s musclebound zoologist steps in to rectify the situation with the help of an all-star cast.
Assuming Malin Akerman closes a deal to join Rampage, she’ll cap off an ensemble comprised of Naomie Harris, The Batman‘s Joe Manganiello, Marley Shelton, Jake Lacy, P.J. Byrne and Breanne Hill. As if that wasn’t enough fodder for those city-levelling monsters, Variety revealed earlier this week that both Jack Quaid (Vinyl) and Matt Gerald had also climbed aboard.
Behind the scenes, Rampage marks another collaboration between Johnson, Peyton and New Line producer Beau Flynn, which shouldn’t be all that surprising given the trio fired San Andreas to global success two years ago. Can New Line capture lightning in a bottle twice? We’ll find out soon enough.
Rampage, meanwhile, will hope to emulate Roland Emmerich’s signature knack for cinematic destruction on April 20th, 2018. That places Peyton’s star-studded creature feature in close proximity to Skyscraper, another one of Dwayne Johnson’s action vehicles that recently planted its flag on a primetime July 2018 release date.