Kung Fu Panda 2 Writers on Future Sequels, and Their Pixar Rivals

What was the extent of Guillermo del Toro's involvement as executive producer?

Berger: Where we saw him the most was actually in the editing room. He basically was coming in to help Jen in the editing room and to make suggestions. Given his body of work he could come in and say how to make our villain more villainous, or how to cut the action scenes to pump up the energy.

Aibel: A lot of it was to help Jen and help her realize her vision. When you're the director of one of these, sometimes you just feel under siege because every department is coming to you for every answer. Guillermo was just amazing at hearing what Jen wanted and helping her achieve it. Sometimes it's just very small stuff that comes from his experience directing movies. And he has an amazing sense of humor, so just for us to be around that kind of energy and to work with him was just more icing on the cake -- an already well-iced cake.

You're going to love this segue, but speaking of icing -- let's talk about Candy Land! We've heard you describe it as a Lord of the Rings-style adventure, which is great because we hear of these film adaptations of properties like Battleship or board games and it's easy to be very skeptical of them. What do you say to those folks who don't really know what to expect from a Candy Land movie?

Aibel: I believe that every idea could be a great movie or a bad movie. It's always about the execution. And Candy Land or Battleship -- or Kung Fu Panda -- those could all be terrible movies, or they could be great movies. Kung Fu Panda could seem completely ridiculous. "Oh, it's going to be a terrible movie with a pop culture-spouting, catch-phrasey panda who fights in a martial arts parody." But to those of us making it, it wasn't that at all. It was a very sincere kung fu movie that happened to have a panda at its heart. And that's how we see Candy Land as well. Yes, it's the name of a board game and there will be characters in it who will be on the board of the board game. But at its heart it's about a family going on a journey and winding up on an epic adventure that we hope will be emotional but also humorous, that we can bring to a Candy Land what we think we bring to Kung Fu Panda.

And you're currently developing it with Kevin Lima, who will direct.

Aibel: Very early on, when they asked, "Do you want to take a meeting on Candy Land?" our first thought was, "That's the worst idea I've ever heard!" Just like people say. Then we met with Kevin and we saw this incredible art work and heard his vision, and he gets it. So the three of us are working very hard to create the kind of movie that we would want to see, and we hope it's not the kind of movie everyone else seems to be expecting.

Berger: There's a personal reason for taking it, too. We don't go out of our way to take a job that we know, because we're not stupid, most people are going to have a knee-jerk reaction to. Why do we go out of our way to take a job that we know most people are going to make fun of? The only good reason is, aside from the fact that we think we can actually make it good, is that we're at the stage of our career where we're fortunate enough to pick and choose jobs and now are choosing jobs based on the people we get to work with.

Given your varying credits, what are your some of your favorite or most influential films, animated or not?

Berger: The two that instantly come to mind is Midnight Run, which is one of our favorite movies. We do have distinct personalities and there are places where our tastes diverge, but Midnight Run to us is an amazing example of action, comedy, great characters that are really distinct and fully developed, character-based comedy, really good plot twists and surprises -- it's got everything we love in a movie and strive towards. And then Parenthood, maybe because when we first moved to L.A. we went to the Director's Guild for a presentation with the screenwriters of Parenthood, [Lowell] Ganz and [Babaloo] Mandel. Any great comedy from the '80s, they wrote it. Also as a young writing partnership it's really exciting to see a successful example of a comedy writing team.

Aibel: They're still going!

Berger: It's from them that we learned that, as young comedy writers who wanted to prove to the world how funny we were, the temptation is to go joke-joke-joke-joke-joke, especially if you're a T.V. writer. It's from them that we learned the importance of pacing, and that sometimes it's better to emphasize the emotional story and really invest in the characters because as they say, you'll laugh harder when you care about a person than if you think they're some joke-telling machine.

Aibel: And I'm a huge Animal House fan. That was, I believe, the first R-rated movie I saw.

Berger: Mine was Arthur.

Aibel: It may seem strange to compare that to the kind of movies that we write, but what it always had for me is that it was funny because it was seemingly unaware of how funny it was. The characters took things very straight, and there's nothing I dislike more than a character in a movie who's sure he's being very funny.

As a viewer, I'm thankful that Po in the Kung Fu Panda films isn't just another reference-spouting Shrek.

Aibel: I feel bad for Shrek, because Shrek was the first to do that and it broke the mold but inadvertently created another mold. Everything that followed ended up copying Shrek and what was originally fresh and original ended up being that way of doing something.

Berger: There's an interesting other Shrek relationship to Kung Fu Panda; I forget when, but when making the first movie we all collectively realized that when you dissect those movies, Shrek is the emotional core of the movie but you've got Donkey, the sidekick who's really comic relief. And we realized that we were in this lucky accidental situation where our main character was effectively Shrek and Donkey all in one.

Lastly, as DreamWorks guys, do you feel that there's an actual DreamWorks-Pixar rivalry?

Aibel: There's zero.

Berger: You're likely to hear people sitting at the commissary at DreamWorks talking about how great Toy Story 3 was. I think that what's frustrating is, and we were talking about this recently, reviews are starting to roll in and if you get a negative review of a DreamWorks movie they're likely to say, "Why can't DreamWorks be like Pixar?" Or, if it's a good review sometimes they can't help but say, "In the Pixar tradition..." and it seems like something that exists more in media. Honestly, I don't even think the rest of the world even knows about the rivalry. When people find out what I do for a living they ask, "Anything that I've seen?" and I say, "Kung Fu Panda." And they ask, "Oh, so you know John Lasseter?"

Aibel: People working in animation are working in animation because they love animation. It's not that they love a particular studio's animation; there's no one there rooting for any other animated film to fail, because that's bad for everyone. There's nothing wrong with having many successes and having every animated movie be a hit, because when they're not, they will stop making them, and they'll say "They don't make money," and the whole industry shrinks.

Berger: I think it's fair to root for Hangover 2 to fail [Laughs], although I can't wait to see it. But I will be buying tickets to Kung Fu Panda 2.

Aibel: All I know, and you can print this, is if I were a 14-year-old who wanted to see The Hangover Part II, I couldn't imagine how I would get into an R-rated movie except by buying tickets to Kung Fu Panda 2 and sneaking in.

Kung Fu Panda 2 is in theaters nationwide today. Read Movieline's review of Kung Fu Panda 2 here.

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