Well, somewhere (not positive about credibility) I had heard that there was an issue with the writer where he wrote the script for Disney, then wrote an alternative, but similar one for Dreamworks. Dreamworks, seeing an opportunity to make Disney appear to be the "copy cat," they rushed it through their production system and released it.
The only problem with the final piece of this....is that if a filmed is rushed through production, then it's apparent in the film. The visuals of the film lack tremendously due to the time constraint put on the animation team. Madagascar doesn't display any of the rushed appearances that are extremely evident in fast production.
I'm searching for articles involving the two, but not really coming up with anything. From my experience in this field tho, both features would have taken the same amount of time (theoretically) to produce. The fact that "The Wild" isn't even completely finished while "Madagascar" is almost (almost) a year old gives Dreamworks the edge on this one. If both companies were given a treatment or script for this film at the same time then Dreamworks would've had to shave an entire year off of their production timeline which in the animation world is almost impossible. The only way to get around that would be to out-source the animation to multiple other studios and from what I remember...Madagascar was done strictly in house. If Disney and Dreamworks were handed that script in the same week and Disney decided to pursue other films at the time and then do it later, then that is their loss...they now become the copy cat, because Dreamworks didn't wait. It may not even be a case of copying...it could be the case of a greedy writer - possibly writing two totally different scripts for two sets of characters.
"The Wild" will be highly criticized as a Dreamworks copy due to the fact that it deals with animals from Central Park and the pop culture references which are abound in Shrek. Another point is that "The Wild" doesn't appear to be very original in concept, a Nemo storyline with Madagascar settings.
I also, just remembered that this isn't even a Disney Animation film. It's been created, animated and everything by C.O.R.E. in Toronto, Canada. According to a gentleman who does story work for Disney, the people at Disney are not fond of it's quality and are rather upset with it. He goes on to state, that everyone at Disney that he has watched it with have all thought that it looks "gastly". Tho, I do not know this mans real name, he is a very respected member of the animationnation.com forum whose credits include storywork starting on "Jungle Book" and working all the way to the present. Generally, whatever this man says always seems to turn out to be absolutely true. It'll be interesting to see what kind of advertising treatment they give this film if the executives on it think that it's going to be not so good.<!-- / message --><!-- sig -->