The fourth instalment of the Kung Fu Panda film series has been announced by Universal Pictures, with the movie being slated for a March 8, 2024 release. The production company behind the series, DreamWorks, had initially planned a trilogy of films on the lead character, which concluded with the release of Kung Fu Panda 3 in 2016.

The lead character of Kung Fu Panda, Po, is played by Jack Black in the film series. The story follows Po as a novice kung fu enthusiast who is chosen as the Dragon Warrior. He later becomes a master of the art under the tutelage of a veteran teacher called Master Shifu (played by Hollywood legend Dustin Hoffman). Over the course of the three films, Po builds his confidence as a fighter and defeats a number of formidable foes.

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The popularity of the first movie, which was also the directorial debut of John Stevenson, spawned a number of spinoffs, including TV shows like Legends of Awesomeness (2011–2016), The Paws of Destiny (2018–2019), and The Dragon Knight (2022), which was recently released on Netflix. Moreover, three short films, one TV special, and a number of video games were also released.

The film trilogy has till date garnered around  $1.8 billion at the box office. Kung Fu Panda and Kung Fu Panda 2 were both nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Before the release of Wonder Woman in 2017, Kung Fu Panda 2 was the highest-grossing film to have been directed by a woman (Jennifer Yuh Nelson). Nelson co-directed the third instalment of the series with Alessandro Carloni.

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Besides Black and Hoffman, other members of the trilogy’s cast include Angelina Jolie, Jackie Chan, David Cross, James Hong, and Lucy Liu. Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger were the scriptwriters for the trilogy, which was