New 'Ice Age' characters are ready for a family-friendly apocalypse

The animated Ice Age franchise is tackling an asteroid apocalypse. That doesn’t mean the end of the world can’t have some fun new characters, though.

Adding colorful supporting cast is pretty much one of the only rules when it comes to making another chapter with woolly mammoth Manny (voiced by Ray Romano), saber-toothed tiger Diego (Denis Leary) and their herd, says Michael Thurmeier, who directs the fifth film, Ice Age: Collision Course (in theaters Friday), alongside Galen Tan Chu. “That’s been a good thing and we wanted to keep that going.”

Jesse Tyler Ferguson is a limber llama in new 'Ice Age'

Here are some of the fresh personalities the old crew meets in Collision Course:

The Dino-birds

The filmmakers wanted to throw dinosaurs into the movie, and what resulted was a family of Jurassic-era hybrid beasties who are the comic villains. Gavin (Nick Offerman) is all about eating Triceratops eggs and planning to fly overhead with daughter Gertie (Stephanie Beatriz) and son Roger (Max Greenfield) as the world gets demolished. Roger, though, is the clan's resident voice of reason, says Thurmeier. “The tweaky little scrawny guy is going to stand up when the time is right.”

Brooke

The locale of Geotopia, a place where animals are forever youthful, was fertile for new characters, and the luxuriously coiffed sloth Brooke is one of the more important residents. Chu says pop singer Jessie J brought “a levity, a bubbliness, an optimism and playfulness” to the character, who rallies Geotopians to help stave off the incoming asteroid and also acts as love interest to the goofy Sid (John Leguizamo). Adds Thurmeier: “It was really funny to see the early sketches of Sid and this beautiful sloth together having a romantic courtship.”

Julian 

Each of the Ice Age movies tries to find a relatable dynamic and, for Thurmeier, Collision Course boasts the relationship between Manny and his future son-in-law Julian (Adam Devine). While fun and adventurous Julian is a perfect match for his fiancée Peaches (Keke Palmer), in Manny’s mind, “no guy could possibly be good enough for Peaches,” Chu says. While Julian was more antagonistic toward Manny during script development, Thurmeier says, “we had to balance it back a little bit and make sure you saw that Peaches and Julian were good for each other and Manny is in the wrong.”

Teddy

Chu says Michael Strahan was a natural to play pumped-up bunny Teddy, who becomes a crush for the elderly sloth Granny (Wanda Sykes) but also has issues with aging himself. “If you imagine him on the football field, that same intensity and energy level he brought into the recording sessions,” Chu says. “He’s a real ham. He’s not shy at all.”

Neil deBuck Weasel

The right man for the job of playing a bucktoothed version of astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson? Neil deGrasse Tyson. “He was the only choice,” Thurmeier says. The animated scientist explains at various points the incoming impact of the catastrophe caused in space by the lovable Scrat, and Tyson adds a little believability to these interludes, Chu says. “It is a pretty cartoony world. We didn’t know how Neil would take our pitch, but he was totally cool about it."