DreamWorks Working on Puss in Boots 2; Kung Fu Panda 3 and Trollhunters Details

Producer-extraordinaire Guillermo del Toro recently spoke to Collider about DreamWorks' latest film, Rise of the Guardians, which he executive produced, and offered up some quotes on two of DreamWorks' upcoming sequels, Kung Fu Panda 3 and Puss in Boots 2, as well as an original film he's developing for the studio, Trollhunters.

We'd previously heard that Kung Fu Panda 3 will be a co-production between DreamWorks' Glendale studio and their newly founded Oriental division, and the plot that the threequel will follow was set up in the last minute of the second film (spoilers ahead if you haven't seen Kung Fu Panda 2). Del Toro, who executive produced Kung Fu Panda 2, said of 3:

"We really finished [Kung Fu Panda 2] with the real father of Po saying ‘My son is alive,’ so that allows us to continue that arc of Po as a character. All I can say is the bad guy in the third one is possibly the most formidable villain in the series… We finished an outline, we presented a character design, we presented a couple of sequences in storyboard, and we’re very hard at work on a screenplay."

Kung Fu Panda 3 is due for release 18th March, 2016.

Some eerie concept art from Guillermo del Toro's stop-motion Pinocchio; a million miles away from the Disney film.

Since its announcement a few years ago, we've heard little about Trollhunters - which would be the Pan's Labyrinth director's first animated directorial credit (although he's also working on a stop-motion version of Pinocchio - not for DreamWorks - due to start filming in 2013, which may well precede Trollhunters) - until now. Del Toro spoke briefly about how the deal with DreamWorks came about and what plot and characters the film will follow:

"The relationship with DreamWorks Animation actually started with me approaching them and saying ‘I want to direct an animated movie,’ and we started developing that screenplay Trollhunters three years ago. We’re on the fourth or fifth draft and I’m doing designs for it, and when the screenplay’s ready and the designs are ready I’m gonna set aside 18 months of my life and dedicate them only to the animated movie.”

It’s about a group of kids that basically are Trollhunters at night, and they have to still do the math exam during the day; they get fit with braces and go through all the growing pains. I love the idea of creating a sort of nuanced portrait of kids that they’re not all perfect. They’re kind of misfits but not in a picturesque, hip way, they’re really, really kids that are not entirely great (laughs)."

Puss in Boots director Chris Miller (left), with the voices of Puss, Antonio Banderas, and his rival/love-interest Kitty Softpaws, Salma Hayek, and DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg (right).

Sounds intriguing! Also intriguing though, is that del Toro spoke about work being well underway on Puss in Boots 2! I don't know if I've missed something, but I've never heard DreamWorks were working on a Puss in Boots sequel until now. Nonetheless, the executive producer says that DreamWorks "already did a couple of drafts on the screenplay". So it seems that the studio are hard at work on the project, which will be directed by the original film's director, Chris Miller:

"We take Puss to a completely different land which is very exotic. When Chris [Miller], the director, said ‘I don’t want Puss to happen in the same universe as the Shrek movies visually, I want to do a spaghetti western,’ he is, in this case, trying to do an adventure movie so we’re taking him to a very exotic locale."

 Well, I guess the Shrek series is never going to die - well at least the first Puss movie was actually really fun.

Via /Film.