What if DreamWorks Pictures/DreamWorks Animation was founded in 1934?/Penguins from A.N.I.M.A.L.S: A Dreamtoons Movie

Penguins from A.N.I.M.A.L.S.: A Dreamtoons Movie is a 2014 American 3D computer-animated action comedy spy film, produced by DreamWorks Pictures and distributed by 20th Century Fox. Based on the Dreamtoons short series of the same name, following the penguins Skipper, Kowalski, Rico and Private in an origin story-like storyline, set during the events of Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted: A Dreamtoons Movie.

The film was directed by Simon J. Smith and Eric Darnell, and written by Michael Colton, John Aboud and Brandon Sawyer. It stars the voices of Tom McGrath, Chris Miller, Conrad Vernon, Christopher Knights, Benedict Cumberbatch, John Malkovich, and Ken Jeong. The film was released on November 26, 2014. It was the final film produced by Pacific Data Images before its closure on January 22, 2015.

Plot
In Antarctica, three young penguin brothers—Skipper, Kowalski, and Rico—defy the laws of nature to save an egg the other penguins believe to be doomed. After saving it from a pack of leopard seals and accidentally setting themselves adrift on an iceberg, the egg hatches into their new little brother, Private.

Ten years later, the penguins decide to celebrate Private's birthday by breaking into the United States Gold Depository at Fort Knox in order to treat him to a discontinued snack called "Cheezy Dibbles" in the vending machine of their break room. Despite this, Private begins to feel out of place with the team, as he is constantly described as being the "secretary/mascot". Suddenly, they are abducted by the machine and sent to Venice, Italy by Dr. Octavius Brine, a renowned geneticist who removes his human disguise and reveals he is actually an octopus named Dave, who has grown resentful of penguins after their cuteness had him shunned from every zoo and aquarium across the globe.

Rico swallows Dave's collection of snowglobes along with a canister of a green substance called the Medusa Serum before the four escape and are chased through the canals and streets of Venice by Dave's henchmen. When cornered, they are rescued by a group of animals from an elite undercover interspecies spy agency called Association of Necessary Investigation and Mission for Any Leading Spy (A.N.I.M.A.L.S. for short), consisting of their leader, a gray wolf whose name is classified (in which Skipper mistakenly calls him "Classified" throughout the film), a harp seal demolitionist named Short Fuse, a polar bear named Corporal, and an intelligent snowy owl named Eva, who Kowalski instantly falls in love with. Their new mission is to have been fighting Dave to protect the penguin population.

At the A.N.I.M.A.L.S. HQ, their communication systems are hacked by Dave, who reveals that he has an enormous supply of the Medusa Serum and that he intends to capture the penguins out of every zoo he was kicked out of. Viewing the penguins as a hindrance to their mission by being not well-trained yet, Classified tranquilizes the group and sends the group to their most remote base (which happens to be on Madagascar) but the penguins awaken mid-flight and crash land in the Sahara Desert before making their way to Shanghai, China, which they mistake for Dublin, Ireland. Discovering Dave's next target in Shanghai using Dave's snowglobe collection, the penguins ship themselves to their current location and make their way to the zoo. Disguising himself as a mermaid-tailed penguin (a tourist attraction) to distract Dave from his real target, Private himself is captured along with the Shanghai penguins after A.N.I.M.A.L.S. arrives to put a stop to Dave's plan. The penguins take one of A.N.I.M.A.L.S.' high-tech planes to give chase, but inadvertently self-destruct the machine. They manage to track Private to an island though, using a tracking device planted on him when Classified darted them before planting them in a flight to Madagascar. Meanwhile, on the island, Dave demonstrates his way to genetically mutate the penguins into hideous monsters as an effort to make humans disgusted by them as revenge.

Skipper and Classified argue on the best means to rescue the captives and stop Dave, finally settling on Classified's plan of a frontal assault and Skipper agrees to act as a diversion. The A.N.I.M.A.L.S. forces manages to corner Dave in his lair only to be captured by Dave's henchmen as well as the other penguins. Dave demonstrates his mutation ray at full power on Private, apparently disintegrating him with the beam, but unbeknownst to them, he escapes at the last minute by using a paper clip he swallowed earlier. Private rescues the A.N.I.M.A.L.S. members, who want to regroup due to lack of equipment, while Private, not wanting to leave anyone behind goes to stop Dave. As Dave's submarine docks at New York with the promise of returning the penguins he found to the zoo, he turns the ray on the rest of the penguins, mutating them all into hideous monsters. The city erupts into chaos as the brainwashed, mutated penguins run amok on the terrified human crowd. Getting Skipper, Kowalski and Rico back to their senses, Private decides to connect himself into the ray to return them to normal. After fending off more of Dave's henchmen, they manage to turn all the penguins back to normal in one huge blast.

Private is left partially mutated from the machine while the rest of the penguins are restored to normal. Despite his strange new look, the Penguins show their gratitude and new-found respect for Private. Dave (who was caught in the blast) has been turned into a pipsqueak version of himself and is trapped in a snow globe where he is admired by a little girl. Finally seeing one another as equals, Classified and the A.N.I.M.A.L.S. chief promise to grant the Penguins anything they want. In addition to Kowalski getting a kiss from Eva, the Penguins join A.N.I.M.A.L.S. and are given their own jet packs b they then fly off above the clouds looking for their next adventure.

In a mid-credits scene, the Penguins return to the circus from Europe's Most Wanted and plug Mort into the ray and use him to revert Private back to normal. Mort does not appear to show any side effects from the ray until he manages to swallow King Julien whole, much to King Julien's delight.