Melman, Gloria, Alex and Marty return in Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa. All images ™ & © 2008 DreamWorks Animation LLC. All rights reserved.

It's been three years since a band of sophisticated New York City zoo animals escaped from their enclosures and found out what life was like on the other side of the world. No, not Samson and friends from Disney's release of The Wild made by C.O.R.E. Feature Animation and Hoytyboy Pictures, but their far more successful DreamWorks counterparts. Alex, Marty, Melman and Gloria are back, along with Directors Eric Darnell and Tom McGrath for Madagascar's first sequel, Escape 2 Africa (opening today).

It's both easy and hard to follow up on a film with a huge cast of idiosyncratic (and funny) characters that concluded on an open-ended note. Easy, because "what happens next?" is a natural question; hard, because... well, how do you take them all to someplace new, both in terms of locale and their personal stories? How do you make sure your characters' challenges affect each other and not go off in four separate directions?

"We had to keep a lot of balls in the air," admitted Darnell. "It was hard to fit everything into 80 minutes. We had so much material from the cast, they're great improvisers. It was an embarrassment of riches, material that had us in tears."

Escape 2 Africa relocates the New York foursome, lemur King Julien and his sidekicks, urbane chimpanzees Mason and Phil -- and the four commando penguins, of course -- onto the titled continent. Winding up in a protected game-preserve, the main characters meet others of their own species for the first time, leading to complications -- romantic and otherwise -- for all. The filmmakers spent a year and a half trying to work the film's story around its original villains, poachers threatening the preserve's animals; while the film's opening flashback reveals how said poachers were responsible for Alex's eventual arrival in New York, Darnell and McGrath ultimately decided that villains who couldn't directly interact with the animals had to go. Instead, they reached for a character whose scene-stealing cameo was one of the original film's highlights.

After a trip to Africa, the filmmakers realized the importance of grass stretching to the horizon. A tool was designed that distributed grass by positioning geometric chunks of it in a shot.

"We had the grandmother on the [wildlife tour] jeep," added McGrath, referring to the tough old lady who took down Alex shortly before he was shipped off to Madagascar in the first film. After the penguins hijack their jeep she becomes de facto leader of the stranded tourists and the animals' unwitting antagonist. Nana, as she's now called, "always had in it for Alex," continued McGrath."We already had her in the film and her role just grew. As it did, she became more of an obstacle" for the film's heroes.

"We both have relatives back east, aunts and uncles who are like tanks. A tough New York woman who can survive in jungle seemed like a good character. It was a breakthrough for us. Sometimes you go down these roads and you're able to change the movie for the better because of it."

Escape 2 Africa's animals are fairly high up the anthropomorphic evolutionary scale, closer to Bugs Bunny than The Lion King's Simba. Even though they spend most of their time standing upright, Darnell and McGrath still wanted them to exist in a naturalistic environment and put all of DreamWorks' technology to work to that end.

"We actually took a trip to Africa early on and went to eight preserves in 10 days," Darnell explained. "When you get there it just opens up. Two-thirds of what you see is the sky, and it feels like you can see the curve of the Earth. It's a huge scope and we wanted to catch that in the film.