Bong Joon-Ho’s Next Project Is A Family-Friendly Animated Film
The Oscar-winning filmmaker unveils his Finding Nemo.
One thing Bong Joon-ho is gonna do is work. Even when it seems like the Oscar-winning filmmaker is on hiatus or at rest, Director Bong is dedicating some part of his being to his love of film. Sometimes that extends to his daily routine, which — as he revealed in a 2017 masterclass — typically starts with him watching a movie. Sometimes it may mean working on multiple films at once, as his latest pivot implies.
Six years passed between the Academy Award-sweeping Parasite and Bong’s latest English-language film, Mickey 17, but the filmmaker didn’t spend that time idly. Since 2019, Bong has been quietly developing an animated film alongside screenwriter Jason Yu (the director of the 2023 psych-thriller Sleep) and longtime producing partner Seo Woo-sik. V8 Pistons Pictures has unveiled a first look at the upcoming project, which will see Bong returning to the anti-industrialist themes he’s best known for.
Bong Joon-ho has been developing an animated film for the past seven years.
Ally doesn’t quite look or sound like a typical Bong Joon-ho project, but there’s a sense that the director will find plenty of ways to surprise us. The film follows the journey of Ally, a “curious and endearing” piglet squid (which is actually a real deep-sea creature) who dreams of escaping the uncharted depths of the South Pacific to finally see the sun and become the star of her own wildlife documentary. Her peaceful life changes overnight when a mysterious aircraft crashes nearby — but it also gives Ally the push to embark on her journey to the surface alongside a few colorful companions.
Per the film’s official synopsis, Ally “explores themes of friendship and courage as encounters between humans and the creatures of the deep reshape both worlds.” It’s described as a family adventure with an emphasis on humor and emotion, and its similarities to films like The Little Mermaid or Finding Nemo can’t be ignored.
That said, Bong is well-known for depicting the crushing realities of our world, exploring how industrialism, wartime, and capitalism oppress the world in every way. From Okja to Snowpiercer and Mickey 17, his work never shies away from how the working class (and helpless animals) are abused by the ever-spinning wheel. Could Ally feature a similarly bleak kind of sociopolitical theme? The new animated film — which from the first image looks very sweet and Pixar-like — probably won’t go quite so dark as Bong’s best-known films, but it’s safe to expect the director to split the difference with his first animated movie.
