^{Credit: Forgotten Island (DreamWorks Animation)}

DreamWorks Animation has released the first trailer for their upcoming feature, Forgotten Island. The film’s official synopsis reads as follows: “DreamWorks Animation, the studio that brought you unforgettable bonds between a boy and a dragon in How to Train Your Dragon, an ogre and a donkey in Shrek, and a robot and a gosling in The Wild Robot, now welcomes a dazzling and emotional story about two lifelong best friends who must come together before they drift apart in Forgotten Island. The new original film is written and directed by Academy Award® nominee Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado and is produced by Academy Award® nominee Mark Swift, the filmmaking team behind Puss in Boots: The Last Wish.” 

In addition to being DreamWorks’ first completely original feature since 2023’s Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken, Forgotten Island draws from the real-life friendship between Crawford and Mercado. Their friendship stretches back over a decade, when they both worked as artists on Kung Fu Panda 2. That’s not the only personal place that Forgotten Island draws from, being grounded in 90s nostalgia and Filipino culture. Mercado is of Filipino descent, as are Crawford’s wife and children. There’s Filipina representation behind the microphones as well. Liza Soberano and Oscar-winner Gabriella Sarmiento Wilson (H.E.R.) voice the besties who find themselves transported to the titular Forgotten Island, putting their friendship to the ultimate test. 

While Forgotten Island is an original concept, it picks up where The Last Wish left off visually, striving to push the style to the next level. “Traditionally, animation has kind of been put in a small box,” Crawford said at the trailer launch. “That it’s for kids, that it’s, you know, supposed to look one way. We loved on Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, [we got to] push and evolve the style, and especially in this movie that’s so personal to us that pulls from so many inspirations that Daniel and I love, we were like, ‘Let’s just blow the walls off this box. Let’s just go big.’ So, there’s a lot of ties to anime in terms of action or pushing character expressions. Then genre is a big one we played with.” 

“With the trailer, you could see just pushing those 2D elements that we played with in Puss in Boots, of more like hand-drawn, painterly textures that bring to life and push the fantasy that we love to tell in our stories, the visual storytelling of it all,” Mercado added. Although Mercado served as a co-director on Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, he wasn’t equally billed with Crawford, the film’s main director. As such, Mercado was unable to share in The Last Wish’s Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature along with Crawford and producer Swift. Crawford and Mercado appear to be equally credited on Forgotten Island, meaning both could score an Oscar nomination for DreamWorks’ latest film. 

Although Puss in Boots: The Last Wish was among the most pleasant surprises of the past several years, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio largely swept throughout that season. The Last Wish had the hurdle of being a sequel, which the Academy rarely recognizes unless it’s from the Toy Story franchise. Funnily enough, Toy Story 5 is coming out later this summer. In a market with so many animated sequels, the Academy may embrace an original buddy picture like Forgotten Island, especially if it delivers the kinetic energy, inventive worldbuilding, and emotionally involving dynamics that the trailer promises. 

DreamWorks came close to a Best Animated Feature victory with 2024’s The Wild Robot, although indie favorite Flow ultimately pulled off a win. The last DreamWorks film to win the Best Animated Feature Oscar was 2005’s Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, which was produced with Aardman Animations. Excluding co-productions, DreamWorks hasn’t won since the inaugural Best Animated Feature Oscar for the original Shrek. Will Forgotten Island break this dry spell after more than twenty years? The fact that Forgotten Island is the only DreamWorks film releasing in 2026 suggests that the studio might have something that will be remembered come Oscar time.  

Forgotten Island hits theaters on September 26, 2026. 

Nick Spake is the Author of Bright & Shiny: A History of Animation at Award Shows Volumes 1, 2, and 3. Available Now!