Guaranteeing Continued Employment For Jack Black
So “Shrek” spawned four movies, three spinoff movies, 10 videogames, a Broadway musical and most importantly, it made DreamWorks Animation a shitload of money. It seems their plan of cramming franchises down your throat until you choke on it is working as speaking with Empire, studio head honcho Jeffrey Katzenberg revealed he plans to keep the gravy train rolling on several animated franchise vehicles.
It seems like next year’s “Kung Fu Panda 2” is only just the tip of an iceberg of a planned total of six films in the franchise. Jack Black is probably thrilled. You see, Katzenberg believes all of the tentpoles at DreamWorks Animation have big arcs and worlds that are demanding to be explored and by golly, he’s uncovering every god-damned stone. “Kung Fu Panda actually has 6 chapters to it, and we’ve mapped that out over the years,” Katzenberg said.
So what else we can expect? How about at least three “How To Train Your Dragon” movies? Katzenberg says, “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…..But 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.”
And let’s not forget “Madagascar,” which has already had two films hit theaters. “So today I can tell you pretty succinctly where Madagascar goes. Ultimately they will come back to New York, and they will come to terms with that, which they will do in this next chapter. Because of the way that movie concludes there’s probably one more for them….Yeah, there’s probably a fourth there.”
Good God. We guess the DreamWorks philosophy is if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, just make more of ’em. Yeah, sure, these are all sort of charming in their “watching-it-on-a-hungover-Sunday-afternoon” sort of way, but really, six “Kung Fu Panda” movies? You gotta be kidding.