Some friendships are too big to forget.

Reuniting the story-artist duo behind Kung Fu Panda 2, directors Joel Crawford (Puss in Boots: The Last Wish) and Januel Mercado bring their most personal project yet to the screen. Forgotten Island arrives at Everyman on 16 October 2026, one of only a handful of fully original DreamWorks features made in the last fifteen years, and the feature directing debut for Mercado, who is Filipino American and has spoken openly about drawing on his own family history.

Set over one last night together before Raissa leaves for college in the States, the film follows lifelong best friends Jo (H.E.R.) and Raissa (Liza Soberano) as a stray step through a hidden portal sends them tumbling into Nakali, an island shaped entirely by Philippine folklore, where every hour spent there risks erasing their memories of each other. Racing to find a way home, they cross paths with Bungi the tiyanak (Manny Jacinto), Raww the were-aspin (Dave Franco), the restless spirit Batiba (Jenny Slate), grandmother Lola Fatima (Dolly de Leon), Datu (Jo Koy) and King Truffle Wuffle (Ronny Chieng), all while the fearsome, shapeshifting Manananggal, voiced by Broadway legend Lea Salonga, hunts them down.

Crawford and Mercado drew on their own childhood summers in the Philippines to fill Nakali with lechon feasts, karaoke nights, Polaroid snapshots and family noise, all wrapped in a saturated, hand-painted palette that echoes the studio's Puss in Boots style. The soundtrack leans just as local, stacked with Filipino artists including BINI, SB19 and Salonga herself, and the film has already picked up a five-minute standing ovation from the crowd at June's Annecy International Animation Film Festival.

Expect a warm, wildly inventive adventure that treats friendship, and the fear of losing it, as the biggest fantasy of all.

Did you know?

To give the Manananggal a voice, composer Nathan Matthew David worked with indigenous music experts to score her scenes with large brass gongs rather than dialogue, building phrases so the gongs seem to warn, question and argue on her behalf. 

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