The Wild Robot Will Return With a Sequel

Did you like The Wild Robot? Good news: there’s gonna be another one.

Less than a month after it came to theaters, Dreamworks Animation’s newest animated film (and its final movie made in-house) has another installment already in development. This morning at the Deadline Contenders event, director Chris Sanders confirmed there are “absolutely plans for a second one,” and that he’ll be returning to helm the next adventure.

Based on Peter Brown’s award-winning 2016 kids book, The Wild Robot focuses on Roz (Lupita Nyong’o), a helper robot who winds up on an uninhabited island. While adapting to her new environment, she ends up becoming the mother to an orphaned goose named Brightbill (Kit O’Connor) and makes friends with the island’s other animals voiced by Catherine O’Hara, Pedro Pascal, and others. Before and after release, it received glowing reviews for its animation and story (and being a real tear-jerker), and has currently made $107.6 million worldwide.

Following the original Wild Robot book, there’s been two sequels: The Wild Robot Escapes from 2017, and last year’s The Wild Robot Protects. Right now, it’s not clear if Brown’s going to make more books after Protects, but you can imagine Dreamworks would like to have another franchise in its stable to join Trolls, Kung Fu Panda, and all the other ones. And given how the studio also likes to spin off its movies into TV shows or holiday specials, we might end up seeing much more of Roz and friends even beyond The Wild Robot 2, which currently has no release window.

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