An animated feature film about Tonka Trucks is now in the works because of course it is.  Sony announced today that they will be partnering with Hasbro and Happy Madison to produce and develop an animated pic based on the popular brand of children’s toys.  Yes, now that robots and board games have already been mined for material, the new frontier for brand-recognizable feature films is toy trucks.  Fred Wolf, a Saturday Night Live vet and the screenwriter of Joe Dirt, Grown Ups and the upcoming Grown Ups 2 has been tasked with writing the script for the currently untitled Tonka Trucks project.

Sony is also developing feature films based on Risk and Candy Land in partnership with Hasbro, with Happy Madison also onboard for Candy Land.  It’d be great if Sony’s animation division could direct their talent towards original, character-driven projects, but apparently kids are still playing with Tonka Trucks, therefore there must be a Tonka Trucks movie.  Hit the jump to read the press release.

I’m starting to think that if the world ends this year, it may not be so bad.  Last night, the new Rob Schneider sitcom, Rob, premiered to 13.5 million viewers.  Today, we’ve learned that Sony Pictures plans to release on Grown Ups 2 on July 12, 2013.  This is sad but not surprising.  Last month, we reported that Adam Sandler and screenwriter Fred Wolf were in talks for a potential sequel.  That happens when you make the highest grossing movie of your career ($271 million worldwide).  There’s no word if co-stars Kevin James, Chris Rock, Schneider, and David Spade will return, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they did.  I imagine Spade and Schneider work for cheese sandwiches and a smile.

Perhaps the underperformance of Jack and Jill ($88 million worldwide) may have driven Sandler to the first sequel of his career.  It’s disturbingly impressive that to this point he kept finding new ways to make awful films without resorting to making even worse sequels.  No other film is currently set for July 12, 2013. [ComingSoon]