Kung Fu Panda Posters
DreamWorks Animation Film Stars Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman
Check out some posters for DreamWorks Animation's upcoming flick, Kung Fu Panda. The Jack Black, Lucy Liu, Angelina Jolie vehicle comes out June 6th.
So far, Kung Fu Panda appears to be a reversal of sorts for DreamWorks Animation. Early reviews claim it's a good time at the movies, and preview screeners have been "pleasantly surprised" by the film. Whether it can stand up to the avalanche of buzz for Disney/Pixar's WALL-E is another question, but so Kung Fu Panda appears to be getting the critics in their corner by doing the most basic (and simultaneously, the toughest) thing: being a good movie.
And a Kung Fu Panda that lives up to its promise is a good thing if Jeffrey Katzenberg and Company want to avoid getting usurped by Twentieth Century Fox as the #2 CGI animated studio in Hollywood.
Certainly DreamWorks had a stellar summer of 2007 thanks to Shrek the Third, but the Glendale studio's winter of discontent was fued by the less-than-thrilling returns generated by Jerry Seinfeld's Bee Movie. As DreamWorks 2006, that year featured a modest hit (Over the Hedge) for DreamWorks, and a total bomb (Flushed Away).
New Kung Fu Panda Posters
The good folks at the Italian film site Bad Taste have scored seven posters for the flick. Most of them are variations on the same theme: Po the Panda (voiced by Jack Black) surrounded by his other martial arts animal buddies doing surprisingly similar kung fu-style poses. Actually, they're either doing a martial arts stance or (in the case of the first one-sheet) complaining about a severe shortage of fire hydrants.
The Furious Five (voiced by Angelina Jolie, Seth Rogen, Lucy Liu, Jackie Chan and David Cross) are getting on-the-poster billing despite the fact that one reviewer claimed the "majority of the film . . . belongs to Black and Hoffman . . . look forward to scenes with Hoffman and Black and later on . . . Tai Lung (the villainous snow tiger, voiced by Ian McShane)." If that review is true, then those posters are setting something up that the flick doesn't deliver. Not smart, people.
However, the new tagline "Our team wishes your team the best of luck!" is a vast improvement over the other tagline "Prepare for awesomeness." That would have inspired vast numbers of movie reviewers to come up with the tagline "Prepare for suck" without even checking if the flick did actually bring the suck.
Whether it brings the awesomeness or the suck, Kung Fu Panda hits theatres on June 6th. You can check out the various one-sheets by clicking over here.
Fun Fact: Angelina Jolie has two other voice acting roles to her credit: Paramount's Beowulf and DreamWorks Animation's 2004 flick Shark Tale, which also featured Jack Black. Beowulf didn't make back its production costs in theatres, while Shark Tale made $160 million in domestic box office over a $75 million price tag.
