In this day and age there's a simple formula for family movies: if they do well, they get a sequel. This is true for live-action and animated, Pixar and DreamWorks. In the case of Kung Fu Panda, the movie was not only a box office success - raking in $631 million world wide - but was also a critic favorite. Naturally a sequel was greenlit and is currently scheduled for a May release. But Kung Fu Panda won't be the last we see of Po and friends.
Empire recently sat down with DreamWorks chief Jeffrey Katzenberg who promised not one, not two, not even three, but four more sequels after the second movie is released next year. According to Katzenberg, the whole thing has been laid out in chapters that have been mapped out. But here's the kicker - KungFu Panda won't be the only Dreamworks animated film getting this kind of treatment: Madagascar will likely have a fourth film after the third arrives in 2012 and two more How To Train Your Dragons will be coming to theaters in the next few years (and they are considering a grand total of eight movies.)
Two words come immediately to mind: Holy Shit. While I encourage forward thinking on a regular basis, do we really need to see Kung-Fu Panda 6 let alone Kung Fu Panda 3? Apparently the studio didn't learn anything from Shrek, which started out great but became incredibly worn down by the end, and that was with only four movies. Let's just hope this isn't the cash grab it appears to be and that they actually have a legitimate plan.
