China Exclusive: Kung Fu Panda back home

The third installment of the hit Hollywood animated blockbuster "Kung Fu Panda" premiered in Shanghai on Monday, bringing Po, the black-and-white martial arts hero, back home.

In contrast to the franchise's first two films, the new release is a collaboration between American animation giant DreamWorks Animation (DWA), its sister studio Oriental DreamWorks (ODW) and China Film Co. Ltd.

Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of DWA, told a press conference in Shanghai on Tuesday that the film features rich details about Chinese culture.

The role of the Shanghai-based ODW is significant, said Li Ruigang, chair of ODW. "It made pandas more authentic. We hope it will come across as a Chinese-style animation made to the Hollywood production standard."

Li added that the Shanghai studio was engaged in every phase of the three-year production.

Focusing on themes of self-improvement and family values, "Kung Fu Panda 3" narrates the life of Po after he reunites with his biological father, Li Shan, and is taken to a secret paradise of pandas.

There he trains his peers to fight a dark power, while mediating the tricky relations with Li and his goose father.

The new film features a panda village based on Qingcheng Mountain in southwest China's Sichuan Province, home to the giant pandas, according to director Jennifer Yuh Nelson.

Nelson said everything was inspired by the original Chinese features, including traditional paper cut-outs on the windows, moss on the roofs and paintings on the beams.

She said the production team visited a panda breeding base in Sichuan, to observe the animal, which helped them to improve upon the previous digital modeling of the pandas' fur and motions.

ODW went to great efforts to dub the film into Chinese, reanimating the characters' mouths and facial expressions when they speak Chinese, pandas altering some of the jokes to better suit the Chinese audience.

Jack Black, who voices Po, said he watched the film three times and was excited for his two kids to see it, too.

"I hope Po's story continues [...] I want to see him get married and have little pandas," said Shirley Zhao, an animation fan who attended the premiere.

The first two films of the franchise, released in 2008 and 2011, raked in about 750 million yuan (about 114 million U.S. dollars) on the Chinese mainland. "Kung Fu Panda 2" was the highest-grossing animation on the mainland until China's "Monkey King: Hero is Back" broke that record last year.

The new film will hit screens in China and the United States on Jan. 29. The producers have high hopes for its release in China as it will be in cinemas for the Spring Festival, the week-long Chinese Lunar New Year holiday, in February.

Last year, China's box office raked in more than 44 billion yuan, a 48.7 percent yearly increase, and urban cinemas recorded 1.26 billion visits, up 51 percent year on year. Endi