Kung Fu Panda is back and with a familiar voice! Original voice actor Jack Black returns to portray Po in the new 11-episode Netflix animated comedy, Kung Fu Panda: The Dragon Knight. The series follows the well-loved panda in a story that takes place after Kung Fu Panda 3, which was released in 2016. During an eating tour of China, Po is accused of misusing a magical weapon and must clear his name.

While the Furious Five don't make an appearance, the series introduces a handful of new characters, including the no-nonsense English knight Wandering Blade, voiced by the "Let You Love Me" pop singer Rita Ora. Game Rant spoke with the show's executive producers Peter Hastings (Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness) and Shaunt Nigoghossian (Justice League Action) about the new series, their biggest creative risks, working with Jack Black, the future of the Kung Fu Panda franchise, and more.

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Game Rant: Peter, given your history with Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness, what was your reaction when this new series came on your radar?

Peter Hastings: I was excited to get into it. Po is such a great character. He's so fun to write and one of those characters where it's like, "let's just put him in a new situation and watch him react to everything." There were a few other things that also excited me. I liked the idea of telling an extended story that spans an entire season. It’s different and lets us tell a few bigger, and more mature, stories.

Kung Fu Panda Dragon Knight

GR: Shaunt, you have such a great history with family animation. What was your relationship to Kung Fu Panda? Did you first see the movie when it came out? And when did you come on board for the series?

Shaunt Nigoghossian: Yeah, I saw the first movie back in the day and I loved it. So, when they called me in for the TV show, I was like, “Okay, let's see what this is.” TV shows are usually comedy based and that's cool. I've done that. I came into the room, I met the execs and Peter, and Peter pitched the concept for the show. I was like, “Oh, wow, this is deep.” They said all the magic words, which were like, "We want this to be cinematic. We want this to be cool. We want lots of action. We want to elevate this to a feature level. We don't want to do another comedy series that resets every episode."

GR: You mentioned that the series tackles a few major storylines. How did you come up with these stories? Did you have to reel back some of these ideas?

PH: Modern television is a lot more open and available to doing different things and breaking the mold. That was really exciting. At the beginning, I came up with a bunch of sign posts or milestones. It was like, “I want this to happen at some point and this should happen at some point, and this should be revealed." Those kinds of things, but I didn't necessarily know what stories were going to connect all those things. And then we brought the room together. We had a great mix of men and women in the room, and everybody had fun ideas.

I made sure to remember, "I'm not making this for kids, I'm not making this for adults. I'm making this for people." And we also wanted to please ourselves. So, certainly in a writers room, you always go off on tangents and do the craziest things, then you have to come back a little, but the intent of what you wanted to do is still there.

Kung Fu Panda Dragon Knight production still

GR: What was the biggest creative risk you took while making the series?

PH: I think our biggest creative risk was how high we aimed for the show’s storytelling and visuals. It was really difficult and hard. A few dead bodies along the way [laughs], that's been our biggest challenge.SN: 100 percent. Trying to do something that’s feature-level on TV budget is very difficult. We had to find workarounds for nearly everything. We were very creative. Peter and I are both pretty experienced guys, so it was helpful to be able to draw on many years of tricks.

PH: That's a big thing. Our experience helps us realize whether problems are important. The reason you know that is because you've already made that mistake. Shaunt and I both brought a lot of experience into the series, which was really helpful. The other challenge was that TV works with limited budgets generally. We have to be creative with what we get. I think, considering that, our show is really fantastic. In fact, I don't even need to consider that. It's fantastic.

GR: You mentioned that you had a fairly limited budget. Talk to me about how that affects the animation process.

PH: It takes a lot of skill. There was skill and a lot of hard work. Since I did Legends of Awesomeness, the technology has improved a lot. You can get things to look very detailed and textured now. It's funny because where the technology gets better is with imperfections. It’s like, now I can make this sword imperfect, instead of having it all be the same tone. Plus the fact that animators, designers, and everybody gets better all the time.

GR: Which new character are you most excited for viewers to meet?

SN: Wandering Blade. As Peter mentioned earlier, the bravest thing we did was not use the Furious Five. Even I, as a fan, was like, “Hey, we're not gonna have Furious Five in this bad boy?” But the great thing about the show is that you do not miss them. There's another group of people that fans will love just as much as them, and will want to follow in future movies.

There are a bunch of new characters, Wandering Blade is the lead character, along with Po. The character is voiced by Rita Ora, who has done a fantastic job. Rita is a super well-known pop singer and this was her first venture into doing animation.

Kung Fu Panda Dragon Knight Po

GR: I am curious about Jack Black's return. Was the series contingent on him returning to voice Po?

PH: He's [Jack Black] done the movies, but he hasn't done the TV stuff. We were already rolling before the pandemic hit, and then we all went home. This show, by the way, has been 100% virtual production. Everybody's been at home. Then the people at Netflix, who were involved in the Kung Fu Panda movies, said, “Hey, you know what? Jack's probably not too busy right now. Maybe he would be interested in doing it.” And so we met and it clicked.

He came on to the show, and it's been a blast. His whole vibe is so fun and playful. He likes to do the work. When you have people in upper positions on a show, who put out that kind of attitude, it spreads through the whole production. He doesn't just bring a good vocal performance, he brings a great attitude that everybody picks up on.

GR: What is next for Kung Fu Panda? Do you see yourselves adding more to the series?

PH: The key to any franchise is having a really strong lead character, like James Bond, Austin Powers, or Po. Then it's basically like, “I just want to throw them into this situation.” We're not trying to wring out story after story, we're trying to spend time with this character that we love. The door's always open for Po, and for Kung Fu Panda.

GR: Specifically for this series, do you see it continuing? Or do you think it ends at a good point?

PH: We definitely want to put out more, and we intentionally crafted the finale of the first season to resolve a lot of story points, but also to open the door for the possibility of more stories.

GR: That's the best way to end the series.

SN: I think Peter nailed it. If people watch it, we're gonna get more. So it'll be that. But for me, I like these characters. I like what we've done with the series. It's something special. My hope by the end of it is that our characters live on, and our story becomes part of the entire movie canon, and we see our characters in the future.

Kung Fu Panda: The Dragon Knight is currently streaming on Netflix.

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