DreamWorks Animation’s Kung Fu Panda 4 is one of the most highly anticipated movies of 2024. It’s been eight years since Po’s last big screen adventure. Director Mike Mitchell (of Shrek Forever After and Trolls), co-director Stephanie Ma Stine...
DreamWorks Animation’s Kung Fu Panda 4 is one of the most highly anticipated movies of 2024. It’s been eight years since Po’s last big screen adventure. Director Mike Mitchell (of Shrek Forever After and Trolls), co-director Stephanie Ma Stine (art director on How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World) and producer Rebecca Huntley (The Bad Guys) share what fans of the franchise can expect from the new characters and cast members, the film’s first trailer, and what needs to happen before KFP4 can open in theaters on March 8th.
Jackson Murphy: It’s an action-packed trailer. Mike, what do you look for in a great trailer for one of your films?
Mike Mitchell: For this one — two things: One is we wanted to make sure that we were gonna tell the next step for Po. We wanted to make sure we had the best story and the best villain and the best theme to move forward and make another one of these out of my favorite franchise. And two: we wanted to make sure everyone recognized that this is for the big screen. All of us worked so hard — not just on the sound design but on the visuals and all the technology, animation and fight sequences. We wanted to make sure everyone feels, “Oh, these guys made it for the big screen. We gotta see this in theaters.”
Rebecca Huntley: It is epic!
JM: Yeah. It looks epic!
Stephanie Ma Stine: So many trailers just show you the best moments and they give away all the best. Our trailer is chock full of amazing moments, but they didn’t show everything. This movie has so much action and comedy. There’s so many more surprises. This trailer is just a taste of that.
RH: Hopefully it leaves you wanting more.
MM: Yeah, it’s got twists and turns we don’t show and characters that show up that we’re not presenting in this trailer:
SMS: There’s so much to share.
JM: Rebecca, Tai Lung returns! For fans of the original, it’s a great surprise. Was it a difficult decision to decide to go down this path of wanting to bring him back?
RH: We all love Tai Lung. He’s like the O.G. — the original that people love. Once we found our story and decided we wanted to bring back villains from the past — what better way than to bring back your original villain who is loved by so many.
MM: I think he’s the best villain that this studio has ever created. This franchise has the best villains out of any films that DreamWorks has done.
SMS: And no spoilers here but Tai Lung has a really incredible relationship between Po, Shifu and Master Oogway. There are connections there that are quite important for Po on this journey. That was an important story point.
Rebecca Huntley, Stephanie Ma Sine and Mike Mitchell
JM: Nice. And Stephanie, we have The Chameleon, a shapeshifter. Can you confirm if it’s Viola Davis? It sounded a lot like her to me.
SMS: (laughs) Yeah. Oh my gosh. She’s freakin’ incredible.
MM: You guessed it! How did you know? Well done!
JM: Thank you.
RH: You know your EGOT winners.
SMS: Incredible to work with. She brought all of her charisma and power to this character who, as you can see from the trailer, is a small chameleon but has so much in her. Because of her size and the way she looks, she has been underestimated for so long, but she has some surprises in store for every character. Viola Davis just killed it with her.
MM: She’s the smallest villain Po’s ever gone up against, but with Viola’s voice, you don’t consider that she’s tiny.
SMS: She has to be in line with all of the other “Kung Fu Panda” villains who are so beloved. We needed someone who had that charisma and power from the voice alone. Pure magic.
JM: And Zhen the fox is voiced by Awkwafina. She’s done voice work in “Raya and the Last Dragon”, “Storks”, “The Bad Guys”, “The SpongeBob Movie” and the upcoming “Migration”. Mike, she is one of the most go-to voice actors in the business today.
MM: She is the voice of animation, just like Jack Black. That guy is the hero in his corner of animation, as well as Awkwafina. She’s a very funny actress — as funny as Jack Black. To have them team-up together, taking you through this story, was very interesting. There’s a lot of comedy to be had with Dustin Hoffman’s Shifu tolerating Po. But in this case Po has met his match. [Zhen] is a thief. She’s kind of a villainess, but at the same time, she’s helping him defeat the villain and giving him information for his journey. So it puts Po in this weird space of him being annoyed by her — there’s a lot of contention between them. But it ties into one of our sub-themes, which is, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.”
RH: Heroes can be found in an unlikely place.
SMS: Because Zhen is a thief, we didn’t want to portray her like a two-dimensional character. There was quite a bit of discussion in bringing on Awkwafina because she was really great in “The Farewell”. She has the dramatic acting depth. A lot of comedy and heart.
MM: And she and Jack Black are already buddies in real-life.
JM: The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon was awesome.
SMS: Everyone was so blown away by it. It was great to see it on TV. All of us were texting each other, “He’s up there!” A bunch of our crew members were there helping to pull Po along.
JM: Nice!
MM: Stephanie got to work with the animators to come up with the best pose for the balloon.
RH: And when they were painting him, our production designer was like, “No! The thread color on his hat is not right!” Still sending notes as they were finishing the balloon.
JM: What do the next few months look like for you guys? A lot of DreamWorks animated movies have come out in the month of March over the years — like “The Boss Baby”, “How to Train Your Dragon” and “The Croods”. What still has to get done before we see “Kung Fu Panda 4”?
MM: We’ve got loads to do, mostly with sound design and mix. We’ve got the best people in the world doing our sound and mix. Academy Award winning sound designer Ethan Van der Ryn, who did the sound on the previous three “Kung Fu Panda” movies, is doing this one. Our main goal is making sure we’re making a film for the big screen — for theaters. We’re putting all our energy… the past three years… into making sure that our set pieces and our action is epic, big and beautiful — and all of our effects for our crazy villain and all of her magic looks spectacular. For the next couple months, it’s all about the tweaking and perfecting the animation that’s left… the effects, the lighting and mostly sound design. This isn’t for streaming, man. We’re making this for a big theater