Ben Stiller’s Beloved $1.9B Adventure Trilogy Arrives on Netflix Next Week

DreamWorks has spent years becoming a formidable rival to Disney in animation. Both the Kung Fu Panda and How to Train Your Dragon franchises are now seen as classics by critics and audiences that pack a lot of heart and well-written characters into their respective adventures through the Valley of Peace and the Isle of Berk. More recently, The Bad Guys has also brought a new type of Mission: Impossible and Ocean's Eleven-type action to the big screen for the whole family, while The Wild Robot earned near-universal acclaim for its emotional story of a service bot raising an orphaned gosling while trapped on an island. However, the crown jewel of their empire is still Shrek, which flipped the script on classic fairy tales and redefined what was possible in family-oriented animation.

One film that's only recently started to gain more recognition for what it offered, though, is Madagascar. Released in 2005, the original film introduced a group of four animals in the Central Park Zoo — Alex the lion, Marty the zebra, Melman the giraffe, and Gloria the hippo — who wind up on a globetrotting misadventure after Marty plots his escape to experience life outside of captivity. Critics didn't love it at the time, but audiences showed up for the star-studded affair led by Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer, and Jada Pinkett Smith. The animal adventure hauled in $558 million globally, unleashing two more sequels that sent the four and their new friends, like King Julien (Sacha Baron Cohen) and the lemurs, to Africa and Europe. Starting April 1, all three films will be available to stream in a new home.

Netflix has hauled in the DreamWorks trilogy, and it couldn't come at a better time. They'll help fill the void of family-friendly flicks left by the upcoming departure of the first two Despicable Me movies and both Rio films. Not only that, but they'll be bringing the 2014 spin-off film, Penguins of Madagascar, back to the platform with them for an extra chaotic adventure that recruits Tom McGrath's avian super spies for a mission to take down a villainous and vengeful Octopus voiced by John Malkovich. Including the spin-off, the Madagascar franchise has been worth a total of over $2.2 billion, making for one of DreamWorks' earliest success stories not involving their layered green ogre. McGrath and Eric Darnell helmed the first two films, with Conrad Vernon joining the duo for Europe's Most Wanted.

Will There Ever Be More 'Madagascar'?

Since Penguins arrived on the scene in 2014, DreamWorks has let the Madagascar franchise lie, though not for a lack of trying to bring it back. As far back as 2010, then-CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg envisioned a fourth installment to wrap up the animals' story after they joined the circus in Europe's Most Wanted. At one point, Madagascar 4 was even dated for release in 2018, though it ultimately never came to be. The film isn't dead yet, though. In a Q&A with Animation Scoop earlier this year to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the first film, McGrath said the future of the series has less to do with money or demand, but with finding the right idea to make bringing Alex, Marty, Melman, and Gloria back worth it.

"But the question I think that the studio has, that they’ll always have is… 'Is there a good story for a fourth one?' And it has to be a worthy story to make the sequel, so it’s not necessarily a money grab. Eric and I love those characters, and there’s plenty of life to be had. It’s just finding the right story to tell in the franchise."

The Madagascar trilogy streams on Netflix starting on April 1. Stay tuned here at Collider for more on all the biggest titles coming to and leaving streaming throughout the year.