Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Sequels Are Yesterday's News

Now it's spin-offs.

The penguins of DreamWorks Animation's Madagascar movie fame are graduating to their own feature film. ...

The four paramilitary avians from Antarctica are secondary but scene-stealing characters in the Madagascar movies, the third of which is scheduled to hit theaters in 2012 ...

The buzz inside and outside DreamWorks Animation is that Puss in Boots is an entertaining eighty-seven minutes. If the kitty flick hits, I expect there will be more.

The point is to create an entertaining full-length cartoon, and if spin-offs provide a safe and commercial route for studios to do that, the studios are going to make the trip. (There are no major American animation studios that aren't doing multiple features with ongoing characters. Of course, the moaning over this move has begun.)

As for the penguins, they've already proven themselves on the big and little screens, so doing a movie built around them is an obvious strategy, is it not?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

As an animator who works on The Penguin of Madagascar TV series I personally have to say it's about time. The penguins are not only fun to watch but great to work on as well. period.

Paul Burrows said...

Not only Dreamworks, but according to Ain't it Cool Pixar is doing a prequel for Monsters 2 called "Monster University" about Mike & Sully's college days pre Boo.

Steve Hulett said...

Gee, everybody's riding the train, aren't they?

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