The Finding Nemo franchise just keeps swimming, just keeps swimming. After two films grossing about $2 billion in total, Pixar is now returning to the franchise in a new, yet familiar, way. It just announced it is working on a short film called Loving Dory, which will play in theaters sometime in the future.
News broke at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, where Pixar revealed not just the plot of the film but also screened some footage. Produced by Mary Alice Drumm and directed by Lou Hamou-Lhadj, Loving Dory follows everyone’s favorite forgetful fish (who, yes, will once again be voiced by Ellen DeGeneres) as she brings Nemo to school. On the way back, she gets stuck in an anemone only to be rescued by what Dory thinks is a jellyfish. In reality, it’s a plastic bag with an empty sunscreen tube in it dropped from a boat above. Dory then develops a friendship with the bag, as only Dory can. The footage screened was a montage of the two doing various things, a la Wall-E and Eve from the beginning of that film.
According to the Wrap, “the near-finished animation had a dreamy, somewhat distorted feel that is reminiscent of what Pixar did on Toy Story 4. Lots of particles in the water, diffusion, layers of sunlight and shadow, and bokeh add up to a dreamy sense of romance in the air, even if it is between a memory-plagued fish and a plastic bag that used to hold sunscreen.”
There’s no word on when the audience will get to see the short yet, but there are a few potential options. The best chance is Gatto, the Italian cat film that’s next from the studio, out in March 2027. After that, the only other film Pixar has officially announced is Incredibles 3, out in June 2028. Incredibles 3 probably doesn’t need a jolt from another one of Pixar’s mega franchises, so we’d imagine it would most likely end up on Gatto. If it’s ready in time.
And, obviously, this all harkens back to the Pixar of old. For years, Pixar would almost always create a new, fun short to accompany their features. That slowed down about 10 years ago, though, with Disney+ becoming the main place for Pixar to debut short-form content. But it’s exciting to think that pipeline could ramp back up, and what better characters to do it than the fish of Finding Nemo?
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