Overview
- Pixar announced Loving Dory at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival on Friday, screening in-progress footage and a recreated story-session pitch for the project.
- Director Lou Hamou-Lhadj said the short centers on Dory developing an emotional attachment to a drifting plastic bag, a central plot beat shown to the Annecy audience.
- Producers described the film as roughly 50 percent complete and made by a compact crew of about 10 people working on a short timeline.
- The team demonstrated an experimental real-time ‘perform mode’ puppeteering interface that puppets facial and body performance for previs and feeds into Pixar’s existing animation pipeline.
- Pixar confirmed the original voice cast will return according to producers and multiple outlets report Ellen DeGeneres will voice Dory; the studio said the short will reach theaters “soon” but has not named which feature it will accompany.