“The Wild Robot” will return.
DreamWorks Animation is growing the sequel “The Wild Robot Escapes,” primarily based on the second e-book within the fashionable collection by writer Peter Brown, and TheWrap can solely reveal that Troy Quane, one of many administrators behind the Oscar-nominated “Nimona,” will take over directing duties from Chris Sanders.
Heidi Jo Gilbert, who labored as head of story on the primary movie, will function co-director.
Producer Jeff Hermann will return, and Sanders will write the screenplay for the brand new installment.
“The Wild Robot,” launched in 2024, was heralded for its painterly animation fashion and emotional depth. It marked Sanders’ return to animation after greater than a decade away and was broadly celebrated. The movie, which starred Lupita Nyong’o as a high-tech robotic named Roz who washes onto an island populated solely by animals, grossed $320 million globally and secured three Oscar nominations, together with finest animated function, together with three BAFTA nominations.
It was awarded Best Animated Feature by the Critics’ Choice Awards and received 9 Annie Award from ASIFA-Hollywood, 4 Visual Effects Society awards, the Producer Guild Award for Best Animated Feature, together with almost “100 additional awards from film industry guilds, critic groups, and film festivals around the world,” in keeping with DreamWorks Animation. It was additionally our #1 animated movie of that 12 months.
In Brown’s “The Wild Robot Escapes,” the second e-book in Brown’s trilogy, Roz and her bird-son Brightbill attempt to escape a dairy farm and return to their island.
It’s not an enormous shock that Sanders just isn’t returning for “The Wild Robot 2,” contemplating his movies “Lilo & Stitch” and “How to Train Your Dragon” (made along with his frequent companion Dean DeBlois) and “The Croods” (made with the nice Kirk DeMicco) all impressed sequels that Sanders didn’t return to direct. He is at present set to write down the live-action sequel to final 12 months’s “Lilo & Stitch” for Disney, with the chance that he’ll additionally direct.
Quane, who had been at DreamWorks growing an authentic mission, had served excursions of obligation at Disney (engaged on “Enchanted”), Sony Pictures Animation (“Hotel Transylvania,” “Smurfs: The Lost Village”) and Blue Sky Studios (“The Peanuts Movie,” “Ice Age”). When Blue Sky Studios, owned by twentieth Century Fox, was offered to Disney alongside the opposite twenty first Century property, the Blue Sky model of “Nimona” was unceremoniously canceled. It was later revived by Annapurna Pictures and Netflix and launched in the summertime of 2023.
Gilbert, an animation veteran and probably the most thrilling voices at DreamWorks Animation, has beforehand performed storyboarding work for Disney, Pixar and Nickelodeon. Before serving as Head of Story on “The Wild Robot,” she additionally served in the identical function on “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish,” working alongside director Joel Crawford. (She had labored as a narrative artist on Crawford’s “The Croods: A New Age,” a sequel to Sanders and DeMicco’s movie.)
At DreamWorks, Gilbert additionally labored as a narrative artist on “Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken” and “Turbo.” She obtained an Annie Award nomination for her work on DreamWorks’ collection “Dragons: Riders of Berk.”
No launch date has been set for “The Wild Robot Escapes.”
