In the latest reorganisation of 2015 release schedules to avoid clashing with the insane movie juggernauts that are Age of Ultron and The Force Awakens, Dreamworks and Fox have announced that they are bumping Kung Fu Panda 3 from 23 December 2015 to 18 March 2016.
It seems that 20th Century Fox doesn’t want the third ouring of Jack Black’s hirsute martial artist to get lost in the inevitable cinematic vortex that will follow Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, which opens on 18 December next year. Fox’s US domestic distribution head Chris Aronson said, “This is part of our constantly reevaluating the competitive landscape, as we do with all of our films”.
Personally, I’d take that with a pinch of salt big enough to grit your drive with, but then I’m a cynical swine. The decision is likely to leave Dreamworks Animation with a very lean 2015. Scuttlebutt has Bureau of Otherworldly Operations off the release list for next year, but this has yet to be confirmed. If it does happen it will leave the animation arm of the beleaguered studio/production company (what exactly is Dreamworks these days?) with only one feature film for 2015: Home, which is scheduled for release on 27 March.
This does nothing to boost confidence in Dreamworks Animation and the company as a whole, after merger talks recently fell through with Japanese conglomerate Softbank and US toy giant Hasbro.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
Dave Bowling
Dave was born at an early age to parents of both sexes. He has been a self-confessed geek for as long as he can remember, having been raised through the 80s on a steady diet of Doctor Who, Star Trek, Red Dwarf and (sigh) Knight Rider. Throw the usual assortment of Saturday morning cartoons into the mix and we have something quite exceptional: someone with an encyclopaedic knowledge of utter tosh; a love of giant robots and spaceships fighting; and the strange desire to leap tall buildings in a single bound while wearing his underpants over his trousers. The death ray is currently in the works and one day you shall all bow to him, his giant space station and fleet of funky orange space shuttles...
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