'Kung Fu Panda 3' Kicking Up $13M Friday & $44M-$45M Opening Weekend …

Much of this colorful movie is best seen in 3-D, which helps the pandas' village come alive. And parents of young children will appreciate that the supernatural villain isn't totally evil, though Kai does have a habit of turning Po's posse into jade

Unlike its predecessors, “Kung Fu Panda 3” is a Chinese-American co-production, which co-directors Alessandro Carloni and Jennifer Yuh Nelson and co-producer Melissa Cobb — who recently visited The City to promote the movie — found amazingly 

Much of this colorful movie is best seen in 3-D, which helps the pandas' village come alive. And parents of young children will appreciate that the supernatural villain isn't totally evil, though Kai does have a habit of turning Po's posse into jade

Kung Fu Panda 3 started its theatrical run in China with a bang, earning a strong estimated $16.3 million on its first day of play. Taken on its own, that's one of the bigger single day grosses for a movie in history, just ahead of Sony 's Spectre

2nd UPDATE, Friday 12:10PM: DreamWorks Animation's Kung Fu Panda 3 via 20th Century Fox is on its way to a $13M opening day and a weekend that's in the $44M-$45M range. That's not too far from the opening of Kung Fu Panda 2 which played over