While Nikki Finke decided to post an internal email from DreamWorks Animation head Jeffrey Katzenberg with a typically snarky little graph, we decided to actually read it and found an interesting little tidbit among the updates, bad spelling and rambling thoughts from the CEO.
“Met with Mad3 team to review 60pgs of rewrite done by Noah Bombach [sic] that are exc!!!,” which translated into normal person speak means that Noah Baumbach did rewrites on the gestating “Madagascar 3.” And it looks like he did a good job.
Now, before film nerds have a collective freakout, it’s a quick and probably fun way for Baumbach to get some coin, and keep his creative juices flowing. It’s not his first rewrite of the year either. He also did script work on Brett Ratner‘s “Tower Heist” for his buddy Ben Stiller who stars in the picture. You also might recall that earlier this year, Baumbach was set to direct his first kids film, “Mr. Popper’s Penguins” with “Madagascar” regular Stiller attached to star before it fell apart (last we heard, Jim Carrey, Jack Black and Owen Wilson were being considered for the lead with Mark Waters (“The Spiderwick Chronicles”) in talks to direct). We wouldn’t be surprised if Stiller himself suggested Baumbach help punch up the material; the two clearly had a great time making “Greenberg.”
And this isn’t the first time DreamWorks has sent out an animated project to an unlikely writer to help polish it; back in May it was revealed that Charlie Kaufman was doing some work on “Kung Fu Panda 2.” So if you take the kids to either of these films and notice an extra dollop of hilarious malaise, you’ll know where it’s coming from.