The latest installment of DreamWorks Animation’s Kung Fu Panda franchise was released last week to a surprisingly good domestic box office opening at $81 Million. The reviews for the film generally range from positive to mixed. While the film does indeed have a lot of visual flair and stunning animation, the overall story seems to be lacking when compared to the previous three. 

But now we may have some insight into the film’s overall production and what led to us getting the product that we ended up with. Recently the film’s co-director Stephanie Ma Stine (this was also her directorial debut) did a Q&A via the Kung Fu Panda Discord server. During that Q&A she revealed many details that raised some eyebrows within the community.

The following details that she revealed are, of course, hearsay. They should be taken with a grain of salt.

As the co-director, she apparently didn’t have as much authority as the main director, Mike Mitchell. Mitchell apparently had total creative freedom from the studio. The only major mandates were that the film couldn’t be very long as they believed that children wouldn’t pay attention to a longer film and that they pushed for “stars” to be featured, hence the casting of Awkwafina, Viola Davis, Ke Huy Quan, and others in various roles alongside Jack Black.

Early on in production, Mitchell had apparently wanted to feature humans in the story, with both the Chameleon (originally named “The Collector”) and Zhen being humans, with the film’s major location being Hu-man City, making Po the only anthropomorphic animal there. The decision was also to give the film a more jokey vibe with the Furious Five’s absence from the film being played for laughs. They also didn’t want to have to pay actors like Angeline Jolie $20 Million to come in and say a few lines, as the film’s budget was only $85 Million. 

Mitchell didn’t really want to flesh out the backstories for Zhen and Chameleon, but both Stine and other members of the crew fought for some development. By the time he was open to it, they were already too far along. Many suggestions for Zhen’s backstory were discarded. Stine apparently fought hard to have Zhen redeemed on screen and would get into arguments with the writers, who apparently didn’t like to be criticized on their work. 

Stein would also go on to say that she really wanted to invoke the feeling of the first two films and wanted the return of a villain like Tai Lung to be done seriously, but her ideas were overlooked.

As for the future of the franchise, Mitchell apparently suggested a Furious Five spin-off, but it is uncertain if anything like that would move forward. As for the future of Kung Fu Panda in the world of television, almost all of DreamWorks’ television animation division has been dissolved. The shows aren’t considered canon to the films anyway, as they are apparently seen as “rivals” to the film department.

The entire Q&A has since been archived and is available to view on the Kung Fu Panda subreddit page.

This, unfortunately, shows a lack of care and effort, at least on the executive side of things, when it comes to both continuing and preserving a popular franchise that has been able to resonate with both children and adults. Focusing on the bare minimum might bring short-term success but affect you in the long term.

DreamWorks is already having a rough time, with 2023 giving us two underwhelming box office performers: Trolls 3 and Ruby Gillman. Early 2024 is already giving us the critically panned Megamind vs. The Doom Syndicate.

Hopefully, they will realize their mistakes and return to making quality productions as they have been known to do in the past. Kung Fu Panda 5 is in the early stages of production. Maybe they can use this as a lesson to better execute the next film, and maybe Stine will get the opportunity to have more creative control if she returns. 

Source: Reddit