Just days after Gary Oldman joined Kung Fu Panda: The Kaboom Of Doom, another batch of actors signs up as well. DreamWorks announced today that Jean Claude Van-Damme, Michelle Yeoh and Victor Garber will work with Jack Black, Angelina Jolie, Seth Rogen, Jackie Chan, Lucy Liu and others on the sequel, which is now set for a May 27th 2011 release.
Oldman voices the character of Lord Shen (a peacock), the film’s formidable new villain while Yeoh brings to life the mystical character of The Soothsayer (a goat). Van Damme and Garber round out the cast as Master Croc and Master Thundering Rhino, respectively.
One has to wonder if getting name recognizable talent to simply lend their voices to a film is ultimately cost effective. Sure, the talent behind the major characters that helped propel the original to a whopping $631 million worldwide all need to come back, but why pay more than you have to for benchwarmers? DreamWorks, coming off of a disappointing opening weekend with their final Shrek feature (and crumbling stock prices as well), may need to rethink their strategy over the course of their next couple of projects to figure out a way to keep production budgets from ballooning to “Kabooming” proportions (pun intended).
Source: DreamWorks Animation
