forgotten island is the place Jo and Raissa never meant to find—until a last-night celebration turns into a step through a mysterious portal, and the only route back may demand what they value most: the memories and emotions of their entire friendship.
In the story sketched by DreamWorks Animation’s upcoming feature, the setting is Nakali, a mystical island packed with magical and mythological creatures the two friends grew up hearing about from their Filipino families. But the pressure point is intimate and immediate: if returning home requires surrendering the shared history that made them “us, ” what exactly counts as rescue?
What is Forgotten Island about, in one clear answer?
Forgotten Island follows two lifelong best friends—Jo, voiced by H. E. R., and Raissa, voiced by Liza Soberano—who become stranded on the fantastical island of Nakali after stumbling into a portal on their last night together before separate life paths. They meet allies and enemies, including the well-meaning-but-hapless weredog Raww, voiced by Dave Franco, and they must confront The Dreaded Manananggal, voiced by Tony-winning icon Lea Salonga. Their dilemma hardens into a deadline when they learn the price of returning home: the memories of their friendship, with the risk of forgetting each other forever.
Written and directed by Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado, the film is described as an action-adventure animated comedy. It centers around Filipino folklore while framing a universal question about love, memory, and what it means to be known by another person over time.
Why does this cast expansion matter to the story’s human stakes?
DreamWorks Animation has added Jo Koy, Dolly de Leon, Ronny Chieng, and Amielynn Abellera to the voice cast, joining H. E. R., Soberano, Salonga, Franco, Manny Jacinto, Jenny Slate, and H. E. R. The additions widen the ensemble around the two friends at the center, shaping the social world that pressures, tempts, and tests them on Nakali.
De Leon and Koy, in particular, arrive as names audiences may recognize across comedy and film, while Chieng and Abellera deepen a roster that already includes performers like Slate, Jacinto, and Salonga. The broader point is not celebrity for its own sake; it is the way a large voice cast can make an island feel peopled—full of competing motives, misread intentions, and the kind of misunderstandings that can pull even a strong friendship off its axis.
Behind the microphones, the creative team signals continuity and change at the same time. The film marks the third collaboration between Joel Crawford and producer Mark Swift, and it is Januel Mercado’s directorial debut. Mercado previously served as co-director on “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” and head of story for Crawford on “The Croods: A New Age. ” Those credits frame Mercado as a storyteller trained in the mechanics of animated adventure, now steering his own feature alongside Crawford.
How do Filipino folklore and “universal” themes share the same frame?
The premise places Filipino folklore in the foreground through Nakali’s magical and mythological creatures—figures Jo and Raissa heard about from their Filipino families. Yet the emotional engine is the fear embedded in a simple line the film itself raises: what if, one day, they forget all about you?
That question can land with anyone who has watched a friendship stretch under time, distance, and new obligations. In the film, the separation is literalized: high school graduates on the edge of different paths. The island becomes the pressure chamber where a familiar change—growing up and drifting—turns into a supernatural bargain. Memory is no longer a soft blur at the edges; it is currency.
That is why the island’s threats are not merely physical. The feared creature, The Dreaded Manananggal, is presented as the most feared on Nakali, but the central terror is more intimate: not recognizing the person you once knew best. The movie’s folklore framework gives that fear a face and a battlefield, allowing the emotional stakes to play out as action, pursuit, and confrontation.
What is being released, when, and who is making it?
“Forgotten Island” is set for a theatrical release on Sept. 26 (ET). A first trailer is set to drop next week (ET). The film is distributed by Universal Pictures.
On the music side, Filipino-American composer Nathan Matthew David—whose prior work includes “Tenet” and “The Mandalorian”—is set to provide the score. In an animated story where memory and emotion are explicit plot stakes, the score often becomes an unseen narrator, guiding the viewer through shifts between wonder, dread, and tenderness. David’s involvement suggests a deliberate approach to that emotional architecture.
For audiences, the practical takeaway is simple: the studio is positioning the film as both spectacle and relationship story—an action-adventure animated comedy anchored to two best friends who must decide what they can afford to lose.
Back on Nakali, what remains when the way home costs everything?
In the film’s defining trade-off, the return route is not measured in miles but in erased moments. Jo and Raissa do not only fight creatures; they fight the idea that the safest exit is also the most devastating one. The portal that brought them to Nakali becomes a mirror: a reminder that even without magic, life can separate people—and that forgetting can happen slowly, quietly, without anyone declaring it.
That is the unsettling promise at the core of forgotten island: a homecoming that could succeed on paper while failing in the only way that matters, leaving two people alive, returned, and unable to name what they meant to each other.
Image caption (alt text): forgotten island — two best friends face a memory-for-home bargain on Nakali.
