Kung Fu Panda is a 2008 American animated martial arts comedy film produced by DreamWorks Animation and distributed by Paramount Pictures. The first installment in the Kung Fu Panda franchise, it was directed by John Stevenson and Mark Osborne, from a screenplay and story respectively written by the writing teams of Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger, and Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Voris. The film stars the voices of Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman, Angelina Jolie, Ian McShane, Seth Rogen, Lucy Liu, David Cross, Randall Duk Kim, James Hong, Dan Fogler, Michael Clarke Duncan and Jackie Chan. The film, set in a version of ancient China populated by anthropomorphic animals, centers on a bumbling panda bear named Po (Black), a kung-fu enthusiast living in the Valley of Peace. When the savage snow leopard Tai Lung (McShane) is foretold to escape imprisonment and attack the Valley, Po is unwittingly named the "Dragon Warrior", a prophesied hero worthy of reading a scroll that has been intended to grant its reader limitless power.
Theatrical release poster
From left to right: Master Viper, Master Monkey, Master Mantis (on Monkey's head), Master Shifu, Master Tigress and Master Crane. The Furious Five are homages to the actual Snake, Monkey, Praying Mantis, Tiger and Crane styles of Chinese martial arts.
DreamWorks Animation LLC (DWA) (also known as DreamWorks Animation Studios or simply DreamWorks) is an American animation studio owned by Universal Pictures, a division of NBCUniversal, which is itself a subsidiary of Comcast. The studio has released a total of 48 feature films, including several of the highest-grossing animated films of all time, with Shrek 2 (2004) having been the highest at the time of its release. Its first film, Antz, was released on October 2, 1998, and its latest film was Kung Fu Panda 4 on March 8, 2024; their upcoming theatrical slate of films includes The Wild Robot on September 27, 2024, Dog Man on January 31, 2025, The Bad Guys 2 on August 1, 2025, and Gabby's Dollhouse: The Movie on September 26, 2025.
DreamWorks Animation headquarters in Glendale, California