Noah Baumbach Rewriting 'Madagascar 3'

Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of Dreamworks, sent out a surprisingly cheery, personal e-mail update to his staff and of course Deadline heiress Nikke Finke “leaked” it and hoped for the worse. The leaked e-mail is actually pretty inviting and makes Katzenberg seem like a cool guy.

He went over to check out Zack Snyder‘s Legends of the Guardians, in which one of the owls yelled expletives and listened to the How To Train Your Dragon 2 pitch, which he called “smart/interesting/ambitious.” Among meetings with hedge fund owners accounting $20 billion and seeing Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World with his family, it seemed like quite a day. You can check out the full e-mail here, but packed into there was this little statement:

Met with Mad3 team to review 60pgs of rewrite done by Noah Bombach that are exc!!

Translation: Jeffrey Katzenberg had a meeting with the Madagascar 3 team in which they reviewed 60 pages of script rewrites done by Noah Baumbach (Greenberg, The Squid and the Whale) and it was excellent.

I’m down for that. This isn’t the first time Dreamworks has brought in an indie legend to the studio. Earlier this year we reportedCharlie Kaufman (Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) doing work on Kung Fu Panda 2.

This isn’t the first animated film Baumbach has worked on, he also co-wrote Fantastic Mr. Fox. I love his work and nice to see him pursue different genres. I’ve actually quite enjoyed all the Madagascar films and this third one is seeing the group head to Europe as part of a traveling circus.

Madagascar 3 is rumored for a summer 2012 release.

What do you think about Baumbach working on Madagascar 3? Would you like to see this crossover more often?