Kung Fu Panda has been in theatres for less than a week, but several people involved with the flick are already discussing the possibility of a sequel. Granted, the movie made $60 million in its first weekend, edging Pixar's Cars and earning $13 million more than Ratatouille's debut, but isn't sequel talk premature? Not according to star Jack Black.
"My eight ball says 'Signs point to yes,'" the actor, who voices Po the Panda in the flick, told AAP. He's eager to do a sequel.
"It's easy for me, I just come in and do the acting voice," he continues. "It's those animators and directors that have to really make the sacrifice."
Jeffrey Katzenberg thinks he can get 5 more movies out of Kung Fu Panda, one more than he planned for his billion-dollar Shrek franchise.
"There is a larger story here, of which this is the first chapter," the DreamWorks Animation CEO told AAP. "In the same way Shrek had five chapters from the beginning, this has six."
However, the big issue is whether the first Kung Fu Panda will make enough coin for DreamWorks to justify a sequel. Katzenberg estimated that the studio spent 4 years, seven months, and 27 days working on the original flick.
"Whether we get to tell those chapters or not isn't something we determine; the movie-goers determine," Katzenberg continued. "(Kung Fu Panda) needs to be a big hit. It needs to be a blockbuster."
Current wisdom determines that a blockbuster is a movie that's made somewhere around $200 million at the box office.
DreamWorks Animation M.O.: sequel, sequel, sequel!
Sequels are a massive part of DreamWorks Animation's business model. Every one of the studio's scripts are green-lit with the possibility of developing another installment should the first flick succeed. Sequels generally get the coveted summer releases, while DreamWorks' original flicks debut during the less-desirable Christmas run-up. The only exception was this year: Kung Fu Panda got the summer slot while Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa has a November 7th debut.
So far, only two of DreamWorks Animation's movies have spawned sequels: 2001's Shrek, which spawned 3 sequels (Shrek Goes Fourth comes out in 2010), a Christmas special and a Broadway play, and 2005's Madagascar.
Sequels make sense from a business perspective. Hollywood wisdom says that, if a movie really hits with audiences, they're more likely to want to check out the further adventures of characters they already know, rather than take a chance on something new.
The two biggest moneymakers of 2007 were three-peats: Sony's live-action Spider-Man 3 (which earned $336 million in domestic ticket sales) and DreamWorks Animation's Shrek the Third, which took $321 million.
The downside with sequels, of course, is that stars (and their agents) automatically ramp their rates by about 30% whenever a studio approaches them about reprising their roles. Also, the studio feels pressure to up the ante on a sequel, adding new characters and villains to complement an already full cast. This explains why the Shrek cast list has expanded over 3 movies, and why Spider-Man faced an increasing number of villains in his third adventure.
Sequels are automatically more expensive for a studio, which can create massive headaches if audiences don't turn out in droves to see the latest installment.
Pirates At World's End Barely Recovered Studio Costs
A classic example of this was 2007's Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. Although the movie earned slightly more than $300 million domestically (thus giving it blockbuster status), it barely made back its studio costs, which had inflated due to actors' salaries and the desire to have a bigger story, and more impressive effects, than in its predecessors.
And should an actor, writer or director decide not to return for whatever reason, then someone has to recast or write out that character, or find a new writer or director.
Andrew Adamson directed the first two Shrek movies for DreamWorks, but left to work on The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Although Shrek the Third made an impressive amount of money, critics felt Adamson's absence keenly, feeling the third movie was nowhere near as good as Shrek 2. This doesn't bode well for Shrek the Fourth, which faces the extra pressure of opening against Pixar's only franchise to date: Toy Story 3, which still has original director John Lasseter involved, albeit in a supervisory capacity.
Would you go see a Kung Fu Panda 2? Let us know what you think below.
 |
