Since The Boss Baby is now out, it makes sense that director Tom McGrath has been doing some talking.
McGrath, alongside Eric Darnell, launched DreamWorks' Madagascar franchise nearly 12 years ago. Released just as the CG fad (short for: a time when ANY computer animated movie would make boffo bucks at the box office) was beginning to wane, it did pretty well, it was certainly more successful than the previous couple of non-sequel DreamWorks films that didn't happen to be about an ogre. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa was released three years later, and made a lot of coin as well. The third installment, 2012's Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted, blew both out of the water critically and commercially... To the tune of $742 million.
Two years later, DreamWorks followed that up with Penguins of Madagascar, which ended up being a domestic doozy and a film that was labelled a big flop. The studio crashed, 2014 as a whole brought DreamWorks down, and regrouping was in order. Prior to all that, the studio had a fourth Madagascar movie slated for the spring of 2018. After the unfortunate chain of happenings, the studio whittled their slate down... Madagascar 4 was a casualty, but it wasn't outright canned.
It was simply removed from the slate because they didn't want to release too many movies every calendar year. Yet it seems like it may not move forward, because as time has gone by, we've heard little about it. When Comcast acquired the studio last year, a new slate was slowly unraveled... It currently ends at spring 2020, and Madagascar 4 is nowhere to be seen. If it debuts in 2021, it'll have been nearly nine years since the last one!
McGrath, in an interview with Hey U Guys, briefly talked about the future of the zoo/circus gang: "There are things in the works, nothing is announced yet, but I think they’ll show their faces once more..." It was super-brief. In the interview video, he seems to get that one out of the way, as he probably can't say too much. Either that, or, it may not get the green light.
I wouldn't have minded one last movie with the gang, though the third one arguably ended their story on a strong note. Still, the new circus characters were a lot of fun and it would be cool to see them again... But, we don't know. I'd certainly take it over a fifth Shrek, for sure.
Do you think Madagascar 4 will happen?
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