Say goodbye to "The Croods 2" because it just got canceled. The sequel was already in trouble when its released date was pushed back from Dec. 22, 2017, to 2018, before Comcast's NBCUniversal acquired DreamWorks Animation from 20th Century Fox back in April.
Now, Variety has reported that Universal Pictures chairman Donna Langley went to DreamWorks' Glendale headquarters to break the news that they were pulling the plug on the project. The reason for the cancellation was not specified, though.
That means that approximately 30 employees were suddenly jobless. Someone at Universal did tell Variety that some of the employees might be moved to other projects, and others would be enrolled into training or "artistic development" programs.
Things turned south rather quickly. Back in August, "The Lego Movie" and "Hotel Transylvania" screenwriters, Kevin and Dan Hageman, were brought in by Universal to rewrite the script for "The Croods 2" and everything seemed fine. However, Variety also revealed that people at both DreamWorks and Universal already had doubts about the project even before Universal was put in charge of the animation studio a few months ago.
"Two sources said that Universal was effectively just ratifying a decision already made by DreamWorks Animation to kill the movie," Variety's James Rainey noted in his piece.
But all is not lost. While the studio has no plans to release "The Croods 2" right now, a source at Universal revealed that "The Croods" is still in the studio's catalog, so there is still a possibility that a sequel may come out in the future if DreamWorks decides to revisit the franchise. After all, the first film did haul in over $587.2 million worldwide.
Right now, "The Croods" will live on in Netflix's "Dawn of the Croods." The 2D-animated series is produced by DreamWorks and the show's storyline takes place before the events of the first film.
