Are You Ready For Six 'Kung-Fu Panda' Movies?
Kung-Fu Panda was silly fluff, but likeable enough as a child's introduction to kung-fu movies. (Assuming someone wouldn't just show their kids the safer Jackie Chan movies at some point — maybe those come after Panda.) Taken against the Shrek and Madagascar sequels (and before How to Train Your Dragon) it made DreamWorks Animation look better than usual. But would I want to see six Kung-Fu Panda movies? Probably not.
Six films is what DreamWorks is planning, according to Jeffrey Katzenberg. And speaking of How to Train Your Dragon — for which we knew at least one sequel is in development — expect to see at least three films in the series. Oh, and at least four Madagascar movies.
Empire talked to Mr. Katzenberg, who, after explaining the plot of the third Madagascar movie (the animals make it back to New York and have to deal with that) says,
Because of the way that movie concludes there's probably one more for them...Yeah, there's probably a fourth there. Kung Fu Panda actually has 6 chapters to it, and we've mapped that out over the years. How To Train Your Dragon is at least three: maybe more, but we know there are a least three chapters to that story. There are actually 8 books... right now, today, we know that there are three for sure that we want to tell and there may be more. We haven't thought, you know, how do we continue beyond that.
Let's go back to our own David Chen, who asked useful questions when the sequel to How to Train Your Dragon was announced: "Are we going to see Dreamworks beat this dragon into the ground? Are we going to see a How To Train Your Dragon Ever After hit theaters in 10 years, when nobody gives a crap anymore?"
The answers would appear to be yes and maybe. But probably yes. (And how does the Dragon spin-off TV show fit in? We don't know.)