Charlie Kaufman Polished ‘Kung Fu Panda 2′

Published by Jeff Leins on May 14, 2010

Charlie Kaufman recently completed script work on Kung Fu Panda: The Kaboom of Doom for DreamWorks Animation.

Heat Vision reports he performed less than two weeks worth of work on Kung Fu Panda 2, so don’t expect a bizarre, mind-bending finished product in June 2011.

While it’s common for successful screenwriters, especially Oscar winners, to perform polishes on nearly-ready screenplays, Kaufman’s involvement in a sequel (an animated one no less) still comes as a shock.  In case you’re not familiar, he is the Oscar-winning writer of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and several other brilliantly original films.

Other animated films that have benefited from great winners include Tom McCarthy’s (The Visitor, The Station Agent) contribution to Up (he created Russell the wilderness explorer), Michael Arndt’s (Little Miss Sunshine) script for Toy Story 3, and NBC’s “The Community” creator Dan Harmon’s short work on the original Kung Fu Panda.