Kung Fu Panda Franchise Fights Its Way Past $2 Billion At The Global Box Office

Thanks to a kick-butt start by "Kung Fu Panda 4" through its first two weekends, the DreamWorks franchise as a whole has passed a pretty major milestone. Across four movies, the animated franchise has now surpassed the $2 billion mark at the box office. Over 16 years and through several enemies, Jack Black's Po has endured multiple decades to help make this one of the biggest animated movie franchises of all time. Skadoosh.

"Kung Fu Panda 4" topped the charts through its first two weekends and has, thus far, taken in $187.1 million worldwide against a very reasonable $85 million production budget — by far the cheapest entry in the series to date. That has pushed the franchise to just over $2 billion collectively. The highest-grossing entry to date remains 2011's "Kung Fu Panda 2" with $664.8 million worldwide. Interestingly, that's also the only movie of the four that didn't open atop the charts when it debuted. In any event, this is great news for Universal Pictures and DreamWorks.

The films have averaged $501 million a pop globally against an average production budget of around $126 million. Those are returns that Hollywood will take all day long, especially considering that these animated films have a long lifespan on home video, with plenty of merchandising opportunities as well. In short, DreamWorks has made an awful lot of money since the first "Kung Fu Panda" hit theaters back in 2009.

Overall, "Kung Fu Panda" now ranks number seven on the all-time global charts as far as animated franchises go at the box office. The rest of the top ten is made up by "Despicable Me" ($4.65 billion), "Shrek" ($4 billion), "Toy Story" ($3.27 billion), "Ice Age" $3.2 billion), "Frozen" ($2.7 billion), "Madagascar ($2.25 billion), "Finding Nemo" ($1.9 billion), "The Incredibles" ($1.8 billion), and "How to Train Your Dragon" ($1.6 billion). You'll care to notice that DreamWorks has several entries on that list, making it an extremely valuable asset to Universal.

Looking at the bigger picture, Universal has been the unquestioned king of animation in the pandemic era. Not only is DreamWorks under the studio's umbrella, but they also have Illumination as well. Movies like "Puss in Boots: The Last Wish," last year's monster hit "The Super Mario Bros. Movie," and even originals like "Migration" have been there to pick up the slack. Several of Disney's recent animated releases like "Wish" and "Strange World" have failed to deliver the goods, and Universal has stepped up to fill that void.

DreamWorks has further capitalized on this franchise beyond the big screen as well, with "Kung Fu Panda: The Dragon Knight" airing for three seasons on Netflix. It's been a very successful run, and there may be more to come. At the very least, this movie's run is far from over and that total will grow a lot before it's all said and done, as it still has many territories left to open in around the globe. 

"Kung Fu Panda 4" is in theaters now.