Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Tisdale, Big Time Rush Members to Star in Animated Film

The teen-friendly cast will also lend their voices to an original soundtrack accompanying the indie project.

High School Musical alum Vanessa Hudgens and Ashley Tisdale are getting back into the animation business.



The actresses join Big Time Rush members Kendall Schmidt, Logan Henderson and Pretty Little Liars' Ashley Benson in a teen-friendly cast for The Great Migration, an animated film from the newly-formed CMI Entertainment, The Hollywood Reporter has learned. Additionally, the group will lend their voices to an original soundtrack to accompany the film.

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Writer Kevin G. Schmidt (Cheaper By the Dozen I, II) will also star.

"The idea for The Great Migration arrived in my email inbox via a weekly newsletter from an alternative physician I follow in Chicago," Schmidt says. "The film centers on a group of characters that encounter a mutated predator threatening to destroy the balance of their environment."

Tisdale has long lent her voice to animation as a series regular on Disney Channel's Phineas and Ferb, while Hudgens previously voiced a character on Seth Green's adult cartoon series Robot Chicken. This will be the first animated project for Kendall Schmidt and Henderson.

The project will mark CMI Entertainment's first attempt at producing a film using pre-visualization, which aims to create high quality animation below current market prices.

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"What we hope to accomplish with The Great Migration is the most efficient animated storytelling without sacrificing artistic vision or quality," says CMI's Michael Cammarata, who cites Timur Bekmambetov as his mentor and inspiration for the project. "If the right partners are economically and creatively on the same page, I believe projects can be brought from conception to reality quicker than ever before."
The film is expected to begin production Nov. 1. Cammarata, Kevin G. Schmidt and Rob Minkoff are producing.

source: hollywoodreporter