Cage ready to make DreamWorks romp into franchise

The makers of the new DreamWorks 3-D animated movie "The Croods", including stars Nicolas Cage and Emma Stone, said Friday they're ready to turn it into the studio's next sequels juggernaut. Following monster-hit series like "Shrek", "Madagascar" and "Kung Fu Panda", DreamWorks made "The Croods", a prehistoric romp directed by Kirk De Micco and Chris Sanders that had its world premiere at the 63rd Berlinale. The movie, which got a warm reception at the festival, features the overprotective caveman dad Grug (voiced by Cage) trying to shield his family from the dangers of an unknown world beyond their grotto hideaway. But his teenager daughter Eep (Stone) has a rebellious streak that gets stoked by a lone wolf (Ryan Reynolds) who introduces her to fire and lures her to "follow the light" and leave her sheltered life behind. Asked whether "The Croods" could be the start of another successful franchise, Cage said: "Yes, I would like to see another adventure with The Croods." Sanders said he thought the characters -- including a stunning array of now-extinct beasts -- had "universal" appeal. "I can't even tell you how many sequences we didn't really ever end up putting in the film so if we did have to make another one, we could pull it together with lots of spare parts right now, with lots of good stuff left over," Sanders said. Stone, best known for "The Amazing Spider-Man" and "Crazy, Stupid, Love", said playing Eep was "one of the most fun things I've ever gotten to do". "The Croods has elements of all of my favorite movies which is that it's not just funny and it's not just heartbreaking, it takes you on a journey throughout the entire film," she said. "It's different than any other animated movie I've ever seen in the sense that it feels so true to life the entire time even though we are in the Stone Age." Cage said he considered animation work good training and called the sweet-natured family tale "a very heartwarming experience". "Fifty percent of performance is voice and in between some of the other movies that I make it was a great opportunity for me to stay in shape, stay in tune. I consider all acting to be musical on some level," the actor, who won an Oscar for the 1995 alcoholism drama "Leaving Las Vegas", said. "Acting is voice and imagination. Even though Emma and I weren't really in the room together (when doing the voiceovers) I could listen to what she did and I could imagine her being there and I could riff off of that... it would be like jazz. "It's a marvellous exercise to stay in shape as an actor to be able to do animated features," he said. With its trademark brand of kids' movies that have enough winks and nudges for adults to join in on the fun, DreamWorks animated features have pulled in more than $10 billion (RM30 billion)in global ticket sales, according to the US trade press.