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‘Finding Dory 2’ Movie: Ellen DeGeneres Talks ‘Finding Nemo’ Character Sequel

By Jacintha Webster
Published on: 02:30 PST, Jul 5, 2016

Finding Dory has topped the box office for the past three weekends, and now there are rumors of Pixar creating a Finding Nemo 3 or Finding Dory 2 to continue on with the franchise and keep the much-loved characters alive.

There was a 13-year gap between Finding Nemo (2003) and Finding Dory (2016), but the silence between the sequels could, in fact, be the franchise’s biggest drawcard. Due to the suspense that built between the two films, Pixar is keeping tight-lipped about the possibility of a Finding Dory 2 film.

This was the method with the Finding Nemo sequel, according to director and writer Andrew Stanton, who worked on the original Pixar film over a decade ago, according to Entertainment Weekly.

“We’ve never had those kind of discussions here,” said Stanton. “The only time they may have occurred, as far as that typical executive speak of, ‘Oh, we got a hit and we want another one,’ was when there was a lot of battling between Steve [Jobs] and [Michael] Eisner about Toy Story 2 and 3. But prior to that and even post-that, any discussion of sequels has always just been story-based.”

Stanton quoted Toy Story and the follow-up, Toy Story 2, then Toy Story 3 as a hard lesson learned when it comes to greed and sequels.

“That was the only time we started for commercial reasons, and almost failed because of it and we took a huge lesson from that,” Stanton said. “We should not approach any movie, no matter whether it comes from a universe pre-existing or if it’s completely original, any differently. It should be inspired by a kernel of an idea for a story that we’re going to want to battle for four years.”

Finding Dory, however, is not a stab in the dark at a Finding Nemo sequel but a realization from Stanton himself that the character of Dory, voiced by Ellen DeGeneres, had a lot more to say. He re-watched Finding Nemo in 3D in 2010 and wondered whether the forgetful Dory would be okay on her own. He decided that the little blue fish could survive on her own and that Finding Nemo would have a sequel and join the likes of Toy Story, Cars, and Monsters Inc., which also all have sequels.

“I knew nobody was going to argue with making a sequel, and I was actually more of the opposite – I was very paranoid, like, ‘We’re not going to say the words ‘Finding anything’ out loud to anybody, including in-house,” he said. “I just knew the minute those words came out of my mouth, I’d never be able… the horse would be out of the barn, and we’d never be able to put it back in.”

As is evident from Finding Dory topping the box office after another weekend, Finding Dory 2 may follow, and hopefully there will not be such a long gap between the first and second film.

“I really do feel like this was the missing piece, emotionally, for the first movie,” Stanton said of Finding Nemo 3. “Now, I’ve stopped saying never for anything because there are a lot of new characters that get introduced and we’ve broadened the universe for this movie. And again, I’m very used to seeing that world continue to open up from the Toy Story movies… so I’ve learned to just say, to my knowledge, I think everything that was born of the first movie is wrapped up. But we’ll see.”

Now that Stanton is toying with the idea of a Finding Dory 2 film or Finding Nemo 3, the next question is whether Ellen DeGeneres is still onboard for playing the voice of the lost blue fish. The answer is yes, as DeGeneres said she would lend her voice to Dory for as long as she can, but it will need to be soon, according to Variety.

“Oh yeah, that’d be great…Hopefully, if we do another sequel, they better hurry up because at some point my voice is going to change.”

[Photo by Chris Pizzello/AP]

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