DreamWorks Animation has made sure that they will be able to deliver stories and animation that audiences can resonate with across the world. That’s the main hope you have for most movies that are released. The studio shocked fans back in 2022 with Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, which was a huge jump for DreamWorks as visually, it was unlike anything they had produced before.

It’s now 4 years later, and the studio returns with their latest upcoming film, Forgotten Island, an original that sees both Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado reuniting, with Mercado delivering this as his directorial feature debut with the studio after co-directing Puss in Boots: The Last Wish.

Forgotten Island is one of the bigger films at the Annecy Animation Festival that’s had its presentation. Earlier this morning, Margie Cohn, president of DreamWorks, took to the stage to tell the audience the theme of their latest adventure: “forever friendship” and “family you make yourself”. With the team behind Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, it was expected that Forgotten Island was going to deliver extremely hard on its themes while remaining stunning.

The directors of Forgotten Island, Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado, took to the stage, jokingly welcoming the audience to their “bootleg Ted Talk” audience. “The old adage is write what you know, but we wrote who you know,” Joel Crawford mentioned as he and Mercado spoke about how deeply rooted this movie is with its Philippine background. The film is inspired by the strong women in their lives, such as Mercado’s sister Jo (after whom one of the main characters is seemingly named) and Crawford’s wife, who is Filipino.

Forgotten Island is set in the 90s, a time where the two directors were growing up, allowing them to insert their experiences with friendship and family into their film. It’s a film that follows two childhood friends, Jo (H.E.R.) and Raissa (Liza Soberano), who make a promise to remain close and find the mythological island of Nakalimutan. As they grow, Raissa prepares to go to Caltech in the USA, with Jo scared that she’s going to lose a friend. Before they know it, their lives take a different unexpected direction that they’ll have to figure out together.

During the presentation, Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado gave more detail about The Wild Pack, a group in the film that Jo and Raissa will be travelling with in Nakali. The first of its members is Raww, an energetic shapeshifting dog voiced by Dave Franco; next up is Bungi, an 8-foot-tall demon baby voiced by Manny Jacinto; and finally, we have Merman, a buffed-up half-fish, half-man voiced by Kevin McCann.

The group will be receiving flashbacks throughout the film, which DreamWorks has outsourced to Snipple Animation to help provide 2D animation inspired by 90s anime, with each character having a different style. Raww’s inspired by Dragon Ball Z and Street Fighter, and even Merman’s inspired by Sailor Moon and romance anime.

Forgotten Island has a strong anime influence that allows for the animators to go crazy with the character expressions and movements that you wouldn’t usually find in a DreamWorks project. It’s a movie that features realistic, naturalistic, and anime animation styles, and it’s proof that DreamWorks is breaking its limits with this new film.

The villains of Forgotten Island were also announced, with Jenny Slater playing a character called Batiban and the legendary icon Lea Salonga portraying the Manananggal, a vampiric creature that can split their torso from their legs and fly with their wings.

During the presentation, audiences were lucky enough to view the first act of Forgotten Island, which gave a sneak peek at its distinctive, electric animation; its fantastic soundtrack, which featured many 90s songs; magnificent blocking to highlight the paths in the characters’ lives; a beautiful score by composer Nathan Matthew David; and just an outrageously hilarious ride.

Luckily, it was also revealed that Annecy will be providing a surprise work-in-progress screening of Forgotten Island, as the audience loved what they viewed so much. The second trailer for Forgotten Island also debuted during the presentation.