Though we’ve learned some details about Pixar’s Finding Nemo sequel Finding Dory (including that Diane Keaton and Eugene Levy are playing the parents to Ellen DeGeneres’ forgetful fish), not much else had emerged about the film. Now, Brazilian site Omelete (via Collider, which offers a translation) has talked to freshly anointed Pixar president Jim Morris about the film, and he spilled a few more details.
The new movie reportedly takes place six months after the events in Nemo, with Dory happily settled and living with the marine community in the same reef as Marlin and his son. She still has issues with her memory, and when she attends one of Nemo’s class trips to watch manta rays migrate home, she starts to have serious homesickness feelings and wants to learn where her family is now.
According to Morris, that will be on the California coastline as “the movie will be mostly set at the California Marine Biology Institute, a huge complex of sea-life rehabilitation and aquarium, where Dory was born and raised. We will get to meet new characters, like an octopus, sea lions, a beluga whale, among others.”
Collider also brings word that the setting has been shifted in the last couple of years, as the original locale was a SeaWorld-type facility, somewhere Pixar is likely to want to avoid given the Blackfish backlash. Still, animated movies change these things up all the time, and Pixar in particular is willing to scrap ideas midway through production. Will Albert Brooks, Ty Burrell, Idris Elba, Dominic West and Vicki Lewis in the cast, Finding Dory will float our way on July 29, 2016.