Parasite Director Bong Joon-ho Reveals First Animated Feature Ally

Bong Joon-ho, the Academy Award-winning director of Parasite, has revealed his first animated feature film. Titled Ally, the project has been in development since 2019 and is targeting a worldwide release in the first half of 2027. CJ ENM, one of South Korea's largest entertainment companies, announced the film alongside a first-look image.

A Deep-Sea Journey With Global Ambitions

Ally follows a piglet squid named Ally who inhabits the little-explored depths of the South Pacific Ocean. Ally harbors an unlikely dream: to reach the surface and one day appear in a wildlife documentary. Her world is upended when an aircraft crashes into the sea, setting her on a journey upward alongside a mismatched group of deep-sea companions. Bong co-wrote the screenplay with Jason Yu, the director of the Korean horror film Sleep.

Barunson C&C handles production, and the film is positioned as a large-scale international co-production involving talent from 12 countries. Key creative contributors include animation supervisor Jae Hyung Kim, whose credits include Toy Story 4 and Inside Out; supervising producer David Lipman, known for the Shrek franchise; and production designer Marcin Jakubowski, who designed the visual style of Netflix's Klaus.

Bridging Worlds

The project represents a notable crossover between the worlds of live-action auteur cinema and animation. Bong, who won Best Picture and Best Director at the 2020 Academy Awards for Parasite, has spoken in previous interviews about his long-standing interest in animation as a storytelling medium. Ally marks the culmination of that interest, bringing together craftspeople from major Western animation studios and Korean production houses.

Pathé is handling international sales for the film, which suggests a theatrical distribution strategy aimed at global arthouse and mainstream audiences alike.

Why the Animation Community Is Watching

The combination of Bong's filmmaking sensibility with top-tier animation talent has generated significant attention across the animation industry. The involvement of artists from Pixar, DreamWorks, and Netflix's animation division alongside Korean production expertise creates a hybrid that does not fit neatly into any single national animation tradition.

For audiences who follow animation broadly, Ally represents the kind of director-driven animated feature that remains rare outside of Studio Ghibli or specific auteur projects. Whether the film connects with anime audiences specifically will depend on its visual style and storytelling approach, but the pedigree behind the project has already made it one of the most discussed animated films in development.