Trivia / Madagascar

• Celebrity Voice Actor: Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, Jada Pinkett Smith, David Schwimmer and Sacha Baron Cohen.
• Descended Creator: The penguins are all voiced by DreamWorks employees: Skipper is voiced by animator/co-director Tom McGrath, Private by editor Christopher Knights, Kowalski by animator Chris Miller and Rico by company founder Jeffrey Katzenberg.
• DVD Commentary: With directors Tom McGrath and Eric Darrell.
• Dueling Movies: One of the most notorious examples. The Disney-released The Wild had been in production for a few years already, but as was usually the case with their early films, DreamWorks Animation caught wind of it and set out to (successfully) beat them to the punch. Madagascar became a hit and The Wild, finally released a year later, was immediately written off as a ripoff by those not in the know. It just as quickly fell into obscurity.
• Genius Bonus: The plane that the lemurs live in has French markings. Madagascar was a French colony from 1897 to 1958.
• Kids' Meal Toy: In Australia, Red Rooster released figures of Alex, Marty, Gloria, Melman, and Skipper.
• Permanent Placeholder: Animator Tom McGrath did what was supposed to be a temporary voice track for Skipper. Robert Stack was originally cast in the role, but after his death, Eric Darnell decided to keep Tom's voice in because he liked it.
• The Red Stapler: This film helped bring the seldom seen species from the island of Madagascar to public attention. A few years after the first film came out The Bronx Zoo in New York City opened the free Madagascar! exhibit where Lemurs and Fossa can be seen.
• So My Kids Can Watch: Ben Stiller's motive for voicing Alex was so his daughters could watch him in something appropriate. Chris Rock's motive for doing the film was part this, part Awesome, Dear Boy, as he wanted to not only be in something his daughter could watch, he also wanted the unique opportunity of having the chance to buy her a stuffed toy of a character he was playing.
• Throw It In!
  • Originally only an instrumental version of "I Like to Move It" was to be used at the lemurs' party; Cohen then made up his own lyrics to the Reel 2 Reel song and rest is history.
  • King Julien was originally just a cameo, with just three lines, but was expanded to a full character when everyone found Cohen's ad-libs and ridiculous accent too funny to cut out.
  • Tom McGrath ad-libbed the line "We killed them and ate their livers." The producers told him he could only keep it if it was clear Skipper was joking.
• What Could Have Been:
  • In 1998, DreamWorks had a film idea called "Rockumentary", which featured a Beatles-esque penguin rock band. The idea was scrapped, but after production on Madagascar started, the directors decided to revive the penguins, but make them a commando unit instead of a rock band.
  • According to the book The Art of Madagascar 2, Maurice was originally going to be the leader of the lemurs. It would've been his idea to have Alex help them with the foosa, and Julien would've been a minor character questioning Maurice's plan.
    • On top of that, Julien was meant to have only two lines of dialogue but when Sacha Baron Cohen was cast, he not only improvised Julien's accent, he recorded eight minutes of dialogue. The production team liked it so much that they made Julien a more prominent character.
  • Jennifer Lopez, Gwen Stefani and Madonna were originally considered to voice Gloria.
  • Melman was originally supposed to be an okapi, but this was dropped in favor of a more familiar animal, the giraffe. The Valentine's Day special Madly Madagascar would later feature an okapi that served as Marty's love interest.
  • Melman was originally named Henry.
  • The Melman/Gloria pairing was originally going to be in the first film. Eventually, it was decided to leave it until the sequel, after the audience had gotten to know their characters.
  • At one point, Gloria was to be pregnant due to being part of a breeding program (hence why her model has such a huge stomach). She was to give birth during the climax of the first film, resulting in a gag where the penguins were swept away by her water breaking, and Melman would become the baby hippo's adopted father. This was dropped because test audiences found it too mature.
  • The musical score was going to be done by Harry Gregson-Williams but was replaced by Hans Zimmer.
  • Ever wondered why out of four main characters, only Marty wasn't voiced by a Celebrity Voice Actor in Polish dub? According to Maciej Stuhr in an interview, he was the originally considered to voice the zebra. However few hours earlier, he received a call with an offer to voice Stripes in Polish dub of Racing Stripes from Master Film dubbing studio, which resulted in a confusion (Stuhr received in a space of few hourscalls from two dubbing studios both asking him whether he "could play a zebra" without any more details, as if both asked him to play the same character). After a few days with the situation being explained, the actor decided to take the role of Stripes (as he was offered that role first), as he couldn't voice two different zebras at once. Meanwhile, the role of Marty was taken over by Klaudiusz Kaufmann who already voiced him in trailers.
  • The scene of the penguins making it to Antarctica, only to realize that it "sucks," was originally going to be The Stinger, until the filmmakers decided that they wanted the penguins to come back into the story.
  • Some scrapped versions of Gloria's design had her much larger, with one looking more like a realistic hippo and another being similar to her final design, but with an even larger rear end. Both were passed on due to her being so big it made working with her design impractical.
  • One character poster for the film features Skipper, but instead of featuring his actor or name, he's referred to as "Joe Penguin".
  • Robert Stack was originally supposed to voice Skipper the penguin, but he died before production began, so the temporary vocal track recorded by DreamWorks Animation animator Tom McGrath was left in as Skipper's voice.

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