As Paramount's proposed merger with Skydance continues to wend its way past regulators, we're looking back at the beginning of the studio's financial troubles through the lens of the 2017 flop Monster Trucks!

Join in as we discuss the film's inception as Paramount's next big franchise, the diverging opinions of studio leadership and director Chris Wedge, and the many ways the studio signaled the audiences and the industry that they'd given up on it long before it came out.

Plus: Were the main characters held back in school several times? Is Creech less energy-efficient than a gas engine? Is Burke a landman? What would the planned sequels have been about? And, most importantly, are monster trucks even cool to begin with?

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Next week: Assassin's Creed (2016)

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Key sources and links for this episode:

• "Today Now! Interviews the 5-Year-Old Screenwriter of Fast Five" (The Onion)
• David Ehrlich's D+ Review of Monster Trucks (IndieWire)
• "Hear Me Out: Why Monster Trucks Isn't a Bad Movie" by Chris Evangelista (The Guardian)
• Deadline story announcing the development of Monster Trucks
• Monster Trucks casting announcements (The Wrap)
• "Monster Trucks Leads Viacom to Take $115M Write-Down" (The Hollywood Reporter)
• "Monster Trucks Proves It: Don't Let a 4-Year-Old Develop a Movie" (Wired)