Will we ever see a ‘Madagascar 4’ movie get made?

The Madagascar franchise was one of the most successful children’s movie franchises of the late 00s early 10s. Following the story of a lion, a zebra, a giraffe, and a hippo who were thrown from their comfy zoo into the harsh realities of the wild, the franchise continued to pick up steam as it went along but a planned fourth film never really panned out. So, why was that, and will it ever happen?

The first Madagascar film, released in 2005, had a great premise, what happens when you take “wild” animals that have perhaps grown up in the rather cushty conditions of Central Park Zoo and place them back into the wild? The film starred the voices of Ben Stiller as Alex the Lion, Chris Rock as Marty the Zebra, David Schwimmer as Melman the Giraffe, and Jada Pinkett Smith as Gloria the Hippo who, after believing they were being transferred, wound up off course and washed up on the Eastern African island of Madagascar.

The standouts of the film though came from the side characters with the penguins Skipper, Kowalski, Private, and Rico becoming firm favorites, enough that they got their own television show The Penguins of Madagascar which then became a movie by the same name a few years down the line, released the same year as the sequel Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa. The second film received a better criticical responses that the first. The penguins weren’t the only beloved side characters though, as fans went mad for Sacha Baron Cohen’s lemur, King Julien, and his crazed fan Mort the lemur (Danny Jacobs would go on to replace Cohen).

After the third Madagascar film was released, Madagascar: Europe’s Most Wanted, there was yet another spin-off show in 2014 following the latter two characters called All Hail King Julien. This show has since gained attention for certain scenes blowing up on TikTok and Instagram. The third film installment in the franchise was the biggest commercial success of the bunch, pulling in $137.6 million in its global opening weekend and finishing off with a box office total of $746 million. This makes it the seventh highest box office success for Dreamworks after the Shrek films, How to Train Your Dragon and Kung Fu Panda according to Box Office Mojo.

There were plans for a fourth film to happen, so what went wrong?

Is there going to be a fourth film?

A fourth film was announced to be in the works as far back as 2014, but here we are, almost a full decade on and we are still waiting. Corporate restructuring of Dreamworks only a year later meant that Madagascar 4 was put on the back burner as Dreamworks limited itself to only releasing two films a year. According to Collider, the film was put back on the table in 2018, only to be taken off again once more as the studio favored other projects as well as the latets Madagascar television series, Madagascar: A Little Wild which landed in 2020.

There has been no cancellation of the proposed fourth film, with the plot centered around the gang figuring out that their lives were pulling them in different directions as they all learn to go off on their own individual journeys, saying an emotional farewell to one another. A plot not too dissimilar to that of Toy Story 4 where Woody parted ways with his old friends in search of a new adventure. Given that the franchise was a huge commercial success for the animation studio it seems like one final round would not be remiss, though we aren’t sure how they are going to figure out the whole Pinkett Smith/Rock issue given what happened at the Oscars last year.

It is likely that Dreamworks will deliver the goods at some point, given how successful the franchise is for them and that, in total, has brought them almost $2 billion. It isn’t that unusual for animated sequels to take their time, look at Toy Story 3 or The Incredibles 2, they both took their sweet time to get to us and yet they were so worth it. All we can do is sit and wait for the madness and color of the Madagascar franchise to return to the big screen.

In the meantime, you can rewatch the first three films on Prime Video, Vudu, and Apple TV.