Since its first film in 1998, DreamWorks has assembled quite the collection of colorful worlds, characters, and more to weave entertaining and often touching stories through the power of animation. However, nothing in its catalog, from Shrek to the Kung Fu Panda series and How to Train Your Dragon, is quite like the original chaos of Forgotten Island. Written and directed by Puss in Boots: The Last Wish duo Joel Crawford and Januel P. Mercado, the latest adventure from the studio is inspired by everything from 90s culture to anime, video games, The Hangover, Philippine folklore, and more in its unique style and story of two lifelong friends trapped on an island where their very memories are in jeopardy. The many inhabitants that Jo (H.E.R.) and Raissa (Liza Soberano) meet on Nakali particularly reflect the Philippines’ mythology.
Upon their arrival on the titular island, the two best friends of Forgotten Island witness the stories their families told them as children vibrantly come to life. They’re joined in their journey to find a way back home by Raww (Dave Franco), a perpetually unlucky were-dog who offers to guide them through Nakali. It isn’t long, though, before they meet other creatures ripped straight from the old stories they heard, like the Kataw prince Mermahn (Kevin McCall) and the agoraphobic batibat, Batiba (Jenny Slate), who lives through the memories of others. With the film now set to come home on digital next week, Collider can exclusively share a new sneak peek that highlights perhaps Jo and Raissa’s biggest-hearted companion, Bungi, played by The Acolyte alum Manny Jacinto.
Bungi is a tiyanak, or a fabled vampire that typically takes the form of an infant to lure in unsuspecting travelers for their next meal. However, Jacinto’s version is much more benevolent, appearing as a big blue demon baby who, despite being 200 years old, has never been away from home. Soberano credited the character’s hilarious introduction for breaking through her genuine fear of the tiyanak given his silly and sweet nature when traveling with the group. His demeanor, Crawford and Mercado believe, can be chalked up to Jacinto striking a balance of naïveté and edge that can also regress back into full-on baby mode. Everything, from the voice-acting to his animation, was made to capture the divide between his more teenage behavior and innocent view of the world.
Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes What Fantasy World Do You Belong To? Middle-earth · Grand Line · The Continent · Camp Half-Blood
Pick your magic, your crew, where you want to wake up and who you would rather be fighting, and we will tell you which world you actually belong in. Four are open to you: an ancient kingdom living through its last good age, an endless sea full of pirates, a continent that pays people to kill monsters, and a summer camp where the Greek gods are extremely real and mostly a nuisance.
💍Middle-earth(Rings of Power)
👒Grand Line(One Piece)
🐺The Continent(The Witcher)
🔱Camp Half-Blood(Percy Jackson)
01
What kind of power do you want? Every one of these worlds runs on a completely different sort of magic.
02
Who is travelling with you? Nobody gets through any of these stories entirely on their own.
03
Where do you want to wake up tomorrow? The best fantasy is usually just somewhere you would genuinely like to live.
04
How are you making a living out there? Even in fantasy somebody has to pay for the horse.
05
There is something in the woods. What do you do about it? All four of these worlds keep something unpleasant out there in the dark.
06
Who is the villain of your story? The enemy tells you far more about a world than the hero ever does.
07
What do you actually believe in out there? Every world hands its heroes one rule and asks them to hold onto it.
08
A thousand years from now, how are you remembered? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides your world.
The Map Is Drawn Your World Is…
Four worlds and four completely different ideas of what a good life
looks like. This is where you belong, what it would ask of you, and what you would get back in
return.
The Rings of Power · Prime Video · Since 2022
Middle-earth
You belong somewhere old enough that the mountains have names and
somebody can still tell you who gave them. Middle-earth is for people who think the right
thing is worth doing even when it will not be finished in their lifetime.
This is the only world on the list where doing good is understood as a very long defeat,
fought anyway, by people who will never see how it ends.
You are drawn to grandeur, to white cities and deep forges and the sense that almost
everything you touch is older than your entire family line.
The Rings of Power is set in the last good age before it all goes wrong, which gives
every quiet scene in it a slightly unbearable weight.
You would take the hard road, and you would take it on foot.
One Piece · Manga since 1997 · Netflix 2023
The Grand Line
You want the sea, a crew, and absolutely nobody telling you where
you are allowed to go. The Grand Line is the world for people whose main ambition in life is
finding out what is over there.
One Piece has run for decades on one very simple engine, which is a group of people who
each want something impossible and have decided to go and get it together.
You collect people. Your ideal crew is a set of misfits who were each written off
somewhere else before you turned up and offered them a better idea.
The world is enormous and deliberately ridiculous, and the emotional gut punches land
harder because of that rather than in spite of it.
You would set sail knowing the map runs out, which is more or less the entire point of
it.
The Witcher · Netflix · Since 2019
The Continent
You would rather be feared and useful than liked and useless. The
Continent is a world where the monsters are the straightforward part of the job and the
people are where it all gets complicated.
Witchers get paid to do what nobody else will and resented for existing at all, which is
a trade most people would refuse and you would probably accept.
You have no real illusions about which side is the good one, largely because on the
Continent that question tends to have a disappointing answer.
The best of these stories are not about the fighting. They are about somebody with a
rigid code being repeatedly cornered into caring about people.
You would take the coin, finish the job properly, and be out of town before the story
got told wrong.
Percy Jackson · Disney+ · Since 2023
Camp Half-Blood
You want the myths to be real and loose in the actual world, and
you want to find out at about thirteen that you were never anywhere near as ordinary as
everybody kept telling you.
Percy Jackson takes the oldest stories we have and drops them into car parks and diners,
which makes the gods considerably funnier and a great deal worse.
You would be the kid every school gave up on, who turns out to have been built for
something nobody thought to test for.
The series is genuinely about friendship rather than destiny, and it says so out loud
every time a prophecy tries to get in the way.
Camp Half-Blood is the real fantasy here: a place where the thing that made you
difficult everywhere else is the thing that makes you belong.
Explore ‘Forgotten Island’ At Home With a Wealth of Special Features
Forgotten Island has plenty of star power to bring life to Nakali’s residents, with Dolly de Leon, Jo Koy, Ronny Chieng, and Lea Salonga rounding out the bunch. The exploration of Bungi is just part of the island’s worth of special features included in the digital release that serve to highlight the entire cast and the directors’ world. Alongside commentary with Crawford and Mercado, there will be a deep dive into the growing friendship of Jo and Raissa with H.E.R. and Soberano, a tour through the many mythology-inspired characters with the cast and creators, a sweeping making-of featurette, a trip to the Philippines with the directors to showcase how they captured the country’s culture, and much more. It all serves to highlight the purposeful effort behind every aspect of one of the year’s most acclaimed animated features, which earned a Certified Fresh 94% from critics and a Verified Hot 95% from audiences.
Forgotten Island comes home on digital on October 27. Check out our exclusive sneak peek in the player above.
