'Ice Age: Collision Course': Meet Jesse Tyler Ferguson's know-it-all llama

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An asteroid is coming right for Earth, and it may very well be that the only person who can save it is a llama. Or not.

In Blue Sky Studios’ and 20th Century Fox’s upcoming Ice Age: Collision Course — the fifth film in the Paleolithic franchise that launched in 2002 — the familiar pack of home-seeking mammals faces a new threat from the cosmos, but they seek a solution in someone who might know everything: Shangri Llama, a new character in the Ice Age franchise, voiced by Modern Family star Jesse Tyler Ferguson.

EW has an exclusive first look at the mystical camelid, a tranquil yogi and the supreme leader of a utopian village called Geotopia. It’s a literally ageless wonderland nestled in the protective shell of a crystal meteor crash site — the Ice Age Shangri-La, if you didn’t glean that from Ferguson’s character’s name — and it’s where Manny (Ray Romano), Ellie (Queen Latifah), Diego (Denis Leary), and Sid (John Leguizamo) seek answers for how to stop another massive comet hurtling towards the planet.

Does Shangri Llama have the knowledge to match his Zen master façade? Ehhh… it’s not Shangri likely.

In a series about the end of the world, it was always just a matter of time until Ice Age’s protagonist herd would look to the skies and the stars with a certain galaxy-fearing dread. The consideration of space is certainly aided by another new character who pops up in the fifth film: an astrophysicist weasel voiced by Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Other new faces in the cast this time around include Jessie J as Sid’s new girlfriend, Adam DeVine as a young mammoth who marries into the clan, and Nick Offerman, Max Greenfield, and Stephanie Beatriz as a trio of menacing dinosaurs.

Ice Age: Collision Course hits theaters July 22.