Forgotten Island: DreamWorks Bets on Filipino Folklore, Not Fairy Tales

DreamWorks has spent three decades mining European fairy tales and martial-arts legend for hits. Its next original swims somewhere new. Forgotten Island, due in US cinemas on 25 September 2026, drops two girls into a magical Filipino island where memories dissolve the longer you stay. No ogre, no panda, no familiar franchise to fall back on. For a studio that usually plays it safe with sequels, that alone makes this one worth a look.

The film arrives at an interesting moment for Indian audiences too. Animated features from Hollywood land here regularly, but the stories almost always come dressed in Western myth. A big-budget animation rooted in Southeast Asian folklore, about friendship and the ache of growing apart, sits much closer to the kind of family drama Indian viewers already love. Whether that translates into ticket sales is the open question.

What the film is actually about

Set in the 1990s Philippines, the story follows two inseparable childhood friends, Jo and Raissa. Raissa is about to move to America, and the two make the sort of promise children make about staying close forever. Before that goodbye can happen, they are mysteriously swept into Nakali, a fantastical island lifted from Filipino mythology.

Nakali has a cruel rule baked into it: the longer you remain, the more your memories fade. The only route home, the trailer hints, may come at the cost of the very memories and feelings that bind the two friends together. It is a neat, emotionally loaded premise, less a quest movie than a story about what we are willing to lose to hold on to someone.

The island is populated by creatures drawn straight from Philippine folklore. Among them is the Manananggal, a self-segmenting mythological being, voiced here by Broadway legend Lea Salonga, and a were-dog named Raww. This is the part most likely to feel genuinely fresh on a global screen, because these figures have rarely, if ever, appeared in a major studio cartoon.

The cast pulls real weight

DreamWorks has loaded the voice booth with names that matter, and crucially, with a largely Filipino and Filipino-American ensemble rather than a token nod.

• H.E.R., the Grammy and Oscar-winning singer, leads as Jo in a rare feature voice role.
• Liza Soberano, one of the Philippines' biggest screen stars, voices Raissa.
• Lea Salonga, the voice behind Disney's Jasmine and Mulan songs, plays the Manananggal.
• Dolly de Leon, the breakout of Triangle of Sadness, and comedian Jo Koy voice island inhabitants and mythical beings.
• Manny Jacinto, Dave Franco, Jenny Slate and Ronny Chieng round out the ensemble.

That casting is not just star-stacking. Putting Filipino performers at the centre of a Filipino story is the kind of choice studios have learned audiences notice, and it has already become a talking point in the early coverage.

The team behind it has a strong track record

The most reassuring thing about Forgotten Island is who is making it. It is written and directed by Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado, the pair who made Puss in Boots: The Last Wish in 2022. That film was a critical and commercial surprise, praised for a bold, painterly visual style that broke from DreamWorks' usual glossy look.

Forgotten Island is reported to carry a similar storybook, illustrated animation approach. If it matches The Last Wish, the film should at least be beautiful to watch, whatever the story does. Crawford and Mercado have worked together since Kung Fu Panda 2 in 2011, and they have described the project as personal, drawing on their own friendship as much as on mythology. Mark Swift produces, with a score by composer Nathan Matthew David.

Why the early buzz is loud, and where to be careful

The first trailer dropped in March 2026 and the response, especially from Filipino viewers worldwide, has been warm. People online seized on small, specific touches: a jeepney rolling through a frame, a portal styled after the Philippine sun, period details from a 1990s childhood. The reaction was less about plot and more about recognition, the feeling of seeing your own world rendered at this scale.

That is genuine and worth respecting. But a few caveats are fair before anyone calls it a guaranteed hit.

First, trailer enthusiasm is not box-office success. Original animated films, without a known franchise behind them, have had a hard time in cinemas over the last few years, even good ones. DreamWorks itself has seen this; the studio leans on sequels precisely because new ideas are a tougher sell.

Second, the strongest early excitement has come from the Filipino diaspora, a passionate but specific audience. The film's real test is whether viewers with no personal connection to the culture also turn up, the way they did for stories rooted in other traditions. The premise about memory and friendship is universal enough to travel, but that is a promise the finished film still has to keep.

Third, a cultural-specific story carries a quiet risk of being handled as decoration rather than substance. The signs so far, the Filipino cast, the folklore at the centre of the plot, point the right way. We will only know once the full film is out.

Should you put it on your list?

On balance, Forgotten Island looks like one of the more interesting animated releases of the year, with clear reasons for both optimism and caution.

In its favour: a director duo coming off a genuinely admired film, a striking visual style, a thoughtful emotional hook, and a setting that has barely been touched by big-studio animation. The honest worry: original animation is a hard commercial road, and a trailer, however lovely, cannot tell you whether the script holds for ninety-odd minutes.

For Indian families, the appeal is easy to see. A story about two girls clinging to a friendship as life pulls them in different directions, wrapped in myth and bright animation, needs no franchise homework. The emotional grammar is familiar even if the folklore is not.

What to watch for next

A few things are still awaited and worth tracking before release:

1. An official India theatre date and whether the film gets a dubbed release in Indian languages.
2. The runtime and rating, which shape how family-friendly the final cut plays.
3. Reviews from the first festival or press screenings, the real signal on whether the story matches the visuals.
4. How the marketing positions it outside the Philippines, which will tell you how confident the studio is about its crossover reach.

For now, Forgotten Island earns a place on the watch-list on potential and pedigree. It is the rare big-studio cartoon trying to show audiences a world they have not seen a hundred times already. That is reason enough to keep an eye on 25 September, and on whenever it finally reaches Indian screens.