The Pixar creative team is often asked the question: “Will we ever do a sequel to Finding Nemo?” And there’s one person in particular who keeps doing the asking, according to Disney chief creative office John Lasseter: Ellen DeGeneres, the voice of Dory, who’s long complained about the lack of a sequel on her talk show.
Well, here it comes, and DeGeneres herself was on hand at Disney’s D23 Expo Friday to celebrate. Andrew Stanton, director of the original film, said he honestly thought the story was a “closed circuit,” but then he started wondering about that daffy little fish with the short-term memory problems. “I wanted to know that if this charming forgetful fish ever got lost again, that she would be okay, that she would find her way home,” he said. “And at the end of Finding Nemo, I wasn’t confident about that. So that’s when I knew I had another story.”
That story involves an ocean sanctuary facility where wounded animals are treated and re-released into the wild. DeGeneres was joined on stage by two stars of Modern Family who are voicing sea creatures in Finding Dory: Ed O’Neill, who plays Hank the Octopus (who is actually a septapus because he’s missing a leg) and Ty Burrell, who plays a white beluga whale who thinks he has a head injury (even though every member of his species has that huge lump on their heads). Kaitlin Olson, of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, plays a whale shark named Destiny–whose frightened fellow fish won’t let her forget the “shark” part.
Though the excitement builds and builds for the release of the sequel, the release date of the movie is still yet to be announced.