No One Is More Excited for Finding Dory Than Ellen DeGeneres

The comedian surprised fans at the D23 Expo to announce details of the upcoming Pixar film.
FindingDory
Pixar

It’s the sequel everyone—particularly Ellen DeGeneres—has been waiting more than a decade for, and yesterday DeGeneres herself took the stage at the D23 Expo to excitedly announce some of the new cast for the sequel to the film that reignited her career in 2003. Yes, it only took years and years of hint-dropping on Ellen to get it to happen, but it's finally in production.

In the new movie, set six months after the last installment, the forgetful fish Dory (DeGeneres) actually remembers something: her family. Her mother, Jenny (voiced by Diane Keaton) and her father Charlie (Eugene Levy) are in a facility in Monterey, California, and once she remembers she has to get back to them. Andrew Stanton, who co-directed the first Finding and will be helming the sequel, thought the story was done with the first movie, but realized there was a second film to be made when the idea to pursue Dory's journey came up.

"I wanted to know that if this charming forgetful fish ever got lost again, that she would be OK, that she would find her way home," Stanton says. "And at the end of Finding Nemo, I wasn't confident about that. So that's when I knew I had another story."

Along the way she meets Hank, an octopus (or rather septopus, since he’s lost a limb) voiced by *Modern Family’*s Ed O’Neill, a beluga whale voiced by *Modern’*s Ty Burrell, and a whale shark named Destiny voiced by *It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’*s Kaitlin Olson. Basically, this movie is going to be DeGeneres hanging out with all the people she kicks it with regularly on daytime TV, except they’ll be marine life.

Check out a new image of Dory and Hank above. Finding Dory is slated to hit theaters June 17, 2016.