Just past the $500 million mark worldwide, Madagascar is one of the biggest hits of the film year, with its colourful zoo animal heroes a welcome break from the gloom of an otherwise rather dark summer at cinemas – both in terms of films and in terms of box office. Well, where one film makes half a billion dollars, expect a sequel, and sure enough DreamWorks has announced that they're planning a second instalment, and a direct-to-video spin-off.
The plot of the original film, for those of you who missed it, involved four pampered animals from the Central Park Zoo being shipwrecked on the titular island after their transport ship back to the wild is hijacked by militant penguins (really). The four friends – Gloria the Hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith), Melman the Giraffe (David Schwimmer), Marty the Zebra (Chris Rock) and Alex the Lion (Ben Stiller) – must then learn to survive without their creature comforts and, in Alex's case, learn to fight his natural instinct to eat his best mates.
There's no word yet on a plot for the sequel, but since the last scene of the previous film saw them sailing away on a boat with no fuel, we're seeing a further shipwreck in their future. All four stars will be returning, but there's no word yet on other characters, most notably Sacha Baron Cohen, who starred as Julien, King of the Lemurs.
The theatrical sequel is due out in 2008, but that's not all. Alongside Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Wererabbit this Autumn, audiences will be able to see a 10-minute short starring the scene-stealing (and boat stealing, and martial-arts practicing) penguins – who will also get a full-length, direct-to-video movie of their own come 2009. Let's just hope that the film's other high point, the poo-throwing monkeys, also make an appearance. We'll keep you up to date as we hear more.