Bong Joon Ho’s debut animated film Ally has assembled one of the most eclectic voice casts in recent memory — and the announcement, timed to the opening of the Cannes Film Festival, signals that the Parasite director’s first foray into animation is a genuinely global event.
Producers unveiled the full ensemble on the opening day of the Cannes market: Alex Jayne Go, Ayo Edebiri, Bradley Cooper, Dave Bautista, Finn Wolfhard, Rachel House and Werner Herzog will all lend their voices to the film. Go, best known from Searching, leads the announcement — a placement that strongly suggests she voices the title character.
The project has been in development since 2019, with Bong writing the screenplay alongside Jason Yu, the South Korean filmmaker behind the 2023 horror feature Sleep. The story centers on Ally, a piglet squid living in the uncharted depths of the South Pacific Ocean who dreams of reaching the surface and one day featuring in a wildlife documentary. Her world is upended when a mysterious aircraft sinks into the ocean, forcing her to embark on a journey accompanied by a mismatched crew of companions.
The production carries serious financial ambition. Korean industry chatter has placed the film’s budget as high as $60 million, which would make it the most expensive feature ever produced in South Korea. The scale of the creative team matches those numbers: animation supervisor Jae Hyung Kim has credits on Toy Story 4 and Inside Out, while supervising producer David Lipman comes from the Shrek franchise and production designer Marcin Jakubowski worked on Klaus. VFX powerhouse DNEG, whose feature work includes Inception and Dune, is handling the 3D animation.
Neon, which acquired North American rights to the film, reunites with Bong following its release of Parasite — the 2019 film that made history as the first non-English-language movie to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.
Cooper’s involvement marks a return to animated voice work, after years of playing Rocket Raccoon in Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy franchise. Edebiri, meanwhile, is at Cannes this week with Clarissa — also a Neon title — in the Directors’ Fortnight section. Bong, who served as jury president at the Marrakech Film Festival last year, previously described the animation process as a “very wild and tough job.”
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The film draws on talent from 12 countries and is targeting completion in the first half of 2027, ahead of a worldwide theatrical release later that year. It will be Bong’s first release since the 2025 sci-fi film Mickey 17.
