{"id":486160,"date":"2026-05-15T14:48:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T14:48:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/486160\/"},"modified":"2026-05-15T14:48:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T14:48:13","slug":"bong-joon-ho-on-first-animated-movie-ally-reuniting-with-neon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/486160\/","title":{"rendered":"Bong Joon Ho on First Animated Movie Ally, Reuniting With Neon"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSeven years after he won the Palme d\u2019Or with \u201cParasite,\u201d Bong Joon Ho<\/a> is back in Cannes, this time with his first animated feature.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAlly<\/a>,\u201d in the works since 2019 and due for completion later this year, is set in the uncharted depths of the South Pacific Ocean, where a curious piglet squid dreams of becoming the star of a wildlife documentary. The impressive voice cast<\/a> includes Ayo Edebiri, Bradley Cooper, Dave Bautista and Finn Wolfhard, with Alex Jayne Go as the lead. The film reunites the director with \u201cParasite\u201d distributors Neon<\/a>, which has already acquired North American rights. Meanwhile, Path\u00e9 is representing international sales excluding Japan and China, which are being overseen by CJ and Penture.<\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking exclusively to Variety from the Gray D\u2019Albion in Cannes, Bong discusses whether his fans might be surprised by his first animated feature and hoping to make an action sequence bigger than George Miller.<\/p>\n

\t\tWhat was behind your decision to make an animated movie?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tMy first ever short was actually an animation film \u2014 stop motion animation. Making that was so difficult that I was like, \u2018Okay, I\u2019m just gonna work with actors, because they just move on their own and I don\u2019t have to do anything.\u2019 It was so taxing mentally. So that\u2019s why I\u2019ve been doing live-action for the past 20-30 years. But I\u2019ve always had that dream to return to animation.<\/p>\n

\t\tWhere did the story of \u201cAlly\u201d come from?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tI was inspired by the book \u201cThe Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss\u201d by photographer Clarie Nouvian. Through these photographs, I noticed so many cool creatures. They\u2019re mysterious, but at the same time already looks like they\u2019re animation. So just looking through this book, I noticed one particular fish that looked like it was quite conscious and aware of the camera, so I started creating a story about that character and the other creatures. They\u2019re in the deep sea, it\u2019s pitch black and nothing ever happens there, but once a year the Nat Geo submersible goes down and it\u2019s the biggest event of the year \u2014\u00a0everyone really wants to be filmed. But then a disaster unfolds. There\u2019s a bomb in the ocean, and it becomes an action movie where the creatures have to protect their world and their homeland.<\/p>\n

\t\tIs there something new and exciting for you as a storyteller that animation gives you that you didn\u2019t have before?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tJust personally as a director, I\u2019ve always wanted to create an awesome action sequence, to create a sequence that can surpass the great ones created by George Miller or Miyazaki Hayao, and I felt like this film was my chance to practice that ambition. With live-action, to do an action sequence you have to block all the roads, you only have three prop cars that you can explode and there\u2019s a deadline. But with animation, there\u2019s no limit \u2014 the control freak in me can be fully unleashed.<\/p>\n

\t\tIs this your first children\u2019s film?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tThere was \u201cOkja,\u201d but it was with Netflix and their rating system was different and because of one particular sequence it got a mature rating. Aside from that, I feel like the rest of the film is quite family friendly. But with \u201cAlly,\u201d even elementary school kids can watch the film, and that didn\u2019t feel so new because of my experience with \u201cOkja.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tDo you think fans of your other films are going to be surprised by Ally?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tI think at first they might be surprised that it\u2019s an animation and they might find it quite refreshing. But once they actually see the film, they\u2019ll be like, \u2018Ok, Bong didn\u2019t go anywhere.\u2019 It\u2019ll be quite familiar to them and they might be happy to see my signatures.<\/p>\n

\t\tYour last film was Mickey 17. I\u2019m curious to know how your experience was working in the Hollywood studio system for the first time.\t<\/p>\n

\n\tSo technically, Mickey 17 is my third English language film, but Okja was with Netflix, and Snowpiercer was with a Korean studio. So this, that really was my first time working with a classic old Hollywood studio. In terms of the actual filmmaking and the mechanism of creating the film, I thought there weren\u2019t really any differences in the process. But because it had quite a big budget \u2014\u00a0it was my first film that had a budget above $100 million \u2014 I felt a lot of psychological, mental pressure. So I think naturally I\u2019m going to work on smaller films from now on.<\/p>\n

\t\tSometimes when filmmakers got to studios and work on films with that budget, they talk about losing elements of creative control. Is the \u201cMickey 17\u201d that you wanted to make the \u201cMickey 17\u201d that we saw at the end?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tDirector\u2019s final cut was part of my contract and everyone at the studio and at my agency tried their best to protect me. Of course, during post production, there was lots of discussions and a lot of opinions going back and forth, but it wasn\u2019t ever like someone was forcing something on me or giving me pressure. And so luckily, all my films have been released as my director\u2019s final cut, even a movie as big as \u201cMickey 17,\u201d and all the good parts of that film and all the bad parts of that film came from me. I take full responsibility. So shit on me if you didn\u2019t like it!<\/p>\n

\t\tDoes it feel good to be back with Neon, with whom you obviously had such great success with \u201cParasite\u201d?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tThis year is mine and Tom Quinn\u2019s 20th anniversary. I met him when he was at Magnolia, a small but great distribution company. They distributed \u201cThe Host.\u201d And then with \u201cSnowpiercer,\u201d Tom was part of Radius TWC, the arthouse indie label of the Weinstein Company. At the time, I was rejecting some of the changes they wanted to make and as punishment they sent it to Radius to give it a limited release. It was punishment, but to me it was a triumph, because Tom was there. And then with Parasite, he acquired the film very early on, just on reading the script. So I\u2019m very happy to reunite with Tom again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Seven years after he won the Palme d\u2019Or with \u201cParasite,\u201d Bong Joon Ho is back in Cannes, this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":486161,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[263],"tags":[90213,88622,11519,18,117,19,17,327,7674],"class_list":["post-486160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ally","tag-bong-joon-ho","tag-cannes-film-festival","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-movies","tag-neon"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116579146331333289","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=486160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486160\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/486161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}