'Finding Dory,' sequel to Ellen DeGeneres' 'Finding Nemo,' set for 2015 release

‘Finding Nemo’ took in $921 million worldwide in 2003. Now fans can look forward to its sequel starring Ellen DeGeneres’ beloved character, ‘Finding Dory.’

Ellen DeGeneres is going fishing again with a sequel to the animated blockbuster "Finding Nemo."

Disney and its Pixar Animation unit announced Tuesday that DeGeneres will reprise her "Nemo" voice role for "Finding Dory." The sequel is due out Nov. 25, 2015, and will be directed by Andrew Stanton, who also made "Finding Nemo."

"I have waited for this day for a long, long, long, long, long, long time," DeGeneres said. "I'm not mad it took this long. I know the people at Pixar were busy creating `Toy Story 16.' But the time they took was worth it. The script is fantastic. And it has everything I loved about the first one: It's got a lot of heart, it's really funny, and the best part is - it's got a lot more Dory."

The new film picks up about a year after the action of "Finding Nemo," with DeGeneres' forgetful fish Dory on her own adventure to reunite with loved ones.

According to Disney, the film will feature new characters along with familiar ones, including Nemo and his dad, Marlin, who was voiced by Albert Brooks. There's no word yet from Disney on whether Brooks will reprise his voice role.

"Finding Nemo" was released in 2003 and took in $921 million worldwide. The movie was the first Pixar production to win the Academy Award for best animated feature after the category was added in 2001. Pixar films have gone on to dominate, winning the Oscar seven years out of 12.

About Nemo fish

Personality

Nemo is very energetic young clownfish. He's very eager to go to school at the beginning of the movie, but lazy at the end. He is also quite friendly with anyone he meets. His father's overprotectiveness leads to him being frustrated most of the time. He leads him into being captured by fishermen. Adventuring and exploring are some of his likes.

He can also be very brave, as shown when he was willing to risk his life to jam the filter after hearing about all his father had done to come and save him and when he willingly entered a net that captured a school of fish to lead them to freedom.

His relationship with his father is what defines the film. Although Nemo loves his father, initially, he felt suffocated and confined by his father's overprotectiveness, which led him to tell Marlin "I hate you." However, after being kidnapped by some scuba divers and placed in a fish tank, he felt sorry for what he did but did not believe his father would come to get him due to his paranoia and fear of danger. However, after learning of his father's bravery, he became braver and hopeful, wanting to quickly meet up with and reconcile with his father, which he managed to do at the end of the film.

He also demonstrated remarkable leadership, as shown when he led a school of fish to direct them to swim downward to break the net that captured them.

Appearances
Finding Nemo

Nemo is a young clownfish who lives with his father, Marlin in a sea anemone. Before he hatched from his egg, Nemo's mother, Coraldisappeared, and the other eggs were killed in an attack by abarracuda. Only Nemo's egg survived, albeit slightly cracked. As a result of the crack, one of Nemo's fins is smaller than the others, thus Marlin worries about him. One day, Nemo heads off to his first day of school. At one point, he boldly leaves the reef to go to a boat on the open ocean. Marlin, who is watching, orders Nemo to come back, when Nemo is suddenly taken by a diver to a fish tank in a dentist's office in Sydney, Australia.

In the tank, Nemo meets the Tank Gang, and their leader, Gill. The fish are horrified when they learn that Nemo, whom they have dubbed "Sharkbait," is to be a gift for the dentist's niece, Darla. Darla has a past history as a "fish-killer" and so the Tank Gang decide to help Nemo avoid that fate. The initial plan to make the tank dirty fails when the dentist installs a new cleaner. While the plan is being carried out, however, Nemo learns from Nigel the pelican that his father is looking for him, which lifts the young fish's spirits.

When Darla arrives, Nemo is placed in a bag. Nemo is able to fool the dentist by playing dead, causing the dentist to flush Nemo into a drain. However, an observing Marlin believes that Nemo has really died and swims off. In the ocean, Nemo runs into Dory, who has earlier helped Marlin in his search for Nemo. Though Dory does not initially remember Marlin's goal, due to a short-term memory loss issue, she soon recalls it and leads Nemo to Marlin who is still brokenhearted.

Marlin and Nemo are thrilled to see each other, but Dory is suddenly caught in a fisherman's net with a school of grouper. Nemo is able to use the skills he obtained from his time in the tank to save Dory. This gives Marlin a new-found respect for his son's abilities, and Marlin becomes less protective of him. He smiles as he watches Nemo going to school.

Finding Dory

Nemo will be in an upcoming 2016 summer film Finding Dory, sequel to Finding Nemo. It has been announced that Hayden Rolence will voice him, due to the fact that Alexander Gould's voice has deepened since the first film.

Video Games

Nemo appears in Disney Universe as a costumed character. Nemo also appears in Kinect Disneyland Adventures as a main character in with in the mini game Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage based on the real life ride of the same name.

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Nemo as he appears at the Disney Parks.

Nemo appears in several Disney attractions including the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage at Disneyland, which is apparently a sequel to the film. The Seas with Nemo & Friends, located in Epcotat Walt Disney World Resort, also features Nemo. The ride's storyline has various characters from the film searching for Nemo, who has apparently become lost once again. Nemo, and other characters, are featured as articulated puppets in Finding Nemo: The Musical at Disney's Animal Kingdom. Duplicates of the Nemo puppet have appeared in various parades at other parks.

Gallery

The Disney Wiki has a collection of images and media related to Nemo.

Trivia
Nemo is the first ever Disney titular tritagonist
In Monsters, Inc., Nemo appears as one of the toys that Boo gives to Sulley after she returns to her room. He also appears on the wall of the Trailer Son and Mom's trailer when Sulley and Mike throw Randallthrough the door.
A Nemo sticker is seen on Andy's toy chest in Toy Story 3.
Nemo also makes a quick cameo in Brother Bear during the scene where Kenai disrupts the salmon fishing.
Nemo's name could very well be a reference to Captain Nemo from Jules Verne's novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and Disney's 1954 film adaptation.
Nemo, in turn, is actually Latin for "no one." In the aforementioned novel, Captain Nemo was so called since nobody ever knows what his real name is, if he ever had one. For the record he was an Indian prince named Dakkar.
Nemo's friend Sandy Plankton could be a reference to Nickelodeon's SpongeBob SquarePants, as "Sandy" and "Plankton" are names of characters from that show.
Nemo is only three inches in length.

15 Things You Might Not Know About 'Finding Nemo'

Although we now recognize 2003's Finding Nemo as one of Pixar’s most critically and commercially successful films, the underwater masterpiece didn’t exactly kick off production as a guaranteed goldmine. Here are a few little-known facts about the rocky road leading up to the film’s status as a bona fide blockbuster.

1. THE FILM WAS INSPIRED BY THE DIRECTOR’S OVERPROTECTIVE NATURE.

“Autobiographical” isn’t exactly the first adjective you’d expect to assign to a road comedy about marine life, but Finding Nemo co-writer-director Andrew Stanton’s story came from a very personal place. As a relatively new father during the film’s development, Stanton found himself at odds with his proclivity to veer into overprotective territory, much in the way viewers see Marlin combating his neuroses in raising his son Nemo. He also had a love for all things aquatic that dated back to a childhood fascination with his dentist’s fish tank, so Stanton used this lifelong interest as a funnel for a deeply emotional story about the challenges of being a good father.

2. STANTON WROTE A SCRIPT LONG BEFORE HE WAS “SUPPOSED TO.”

Pixar’s multitiered film production process begins with a basic premise pitch to the creative higher-ups, followed by (for all greenlit projects) a written story treatment. Stanton already had a script completed before this second step took place, the only Pixar project to proceed in this manner.

3. IT TOOK ONLY ONE WORD TO GET THE GREEN LIGHT FOR FINDING NEMO.

“You had me at ‘fish.’” That is precisely what John Lasseter, Pixar’s chief creative officer, said to Stanton following his exhaustive pitch for his passion project.

4. THE MOVIE’S ART TEAM WENT THROUGH MARINE TRAINING PRIOR TO PRODUCTION.

In order to get the look and the feel of Finding Nemo’s characters and atmosphere just right, Pixar’s in-house art team was required to take courses and audit lectures in marine biology, oceanography, and ichthyology while enrolling in scuba diving classes.

5. DOGS WERE USED AS MODELS FOR THE FISHY FACIAL EXPRESSIONS.

While the Pixar team’s extensive research on the denizens of the deep yielded a wide variety of spectacular shapes and colors perfectly suited to an animated feature, the underwater populace proved consistently lacking when it came to one anatomical component. The dull eyes of the average finned critter weren’t especially conducive to building expressive characters, so Pixar had to look elsewhere for its optical models. The crew chose one of the most openly expressive members of the animal kingdom on which to model the eyes of its fish characters: dogs.

6. THE ORIGINAL SCRIPT HAD A DIFFERENT TREATMENT FOR THE BARRACUDA INCIDENT.

At first, Stanton kept the inspiration for Marlin’s overprotective attitude—the loss of his wife and all but one of their unborn children in a barracuda attack—a secret to reveal gradually through intermittent flashback sequences. Ultimately, this technique made the revelation obvious and anticlimactic while making Marlin feel substantially less likable, so the script changed.

7. GILL WAS A VILLAINOUS CHARACTER IN AN EARLIER VERSION OF THE STORY.

While the combination of somber coloration, a scowling beak, and the menacing vocals of Willem Dafoe render Nemo’s fish tank pal Gill an intimidating presence, we learn soon enough that he is in fact a good guy who has the best interests of his fellow captives at heart. The original cut of Finding Nemo was more ambiguous about Gill’s integrity, however, making him the owner of a falsified identity that he swiped from a nautical-themed children’s book housed in the dentist’s waiting room.

8. MEGAN MULLALLY WAS FIRED AFTER PRODUCERS HEARD HER REAL VOICE.

In the early 2000s, Megan Mullally was best known for her Will & Grace character, the rude and eccentric Karen Walker. Chief among the character’s recognizable characteristics was her high-pitched voice, which Pixar producers apparently thought would be perfect for an animated fish. Upon hiring Mullally to voice an undisclosed character in the movie, the crew discovered that the actress’ natural voice was of average pitch and that Mullally was unwilling to reproduce “the Karen voice” for the film. As such, Mullally was dismissed from the Finding Nemo cast.

9. ALBERT BROOKS REPLACED ANOTHER BIG STAR.

Although Brooks’ background in films like Broadcast News and Mother seems like it would have made him an obvious candidate to play the high-strung Marlin, the first actor cast in the role was William H. Macy. The Fargo star recorded his dialogue for an early screening ofFinding Nemo, but producers ultimately felt that he lacked the warmth required for the role of the father fish.

10. THE DIRECTOR RECORDED ALL OF ONE CHARACTER’S DIALOGUE WHILE LYING ON A COUCH.

Stanton never intended to commit his voice to the final cut of Finding Nemo, but only to sub in as a placeholder until the right actor could be cast to play Crush, the easygoing sea turtle with the California accent. Perhaps due to his understanding of his vocal contribution as merely temporary (or maybe, in fact, to get into the “slacker” mindset of his character), Stanton recorded all of Crush’s dialogue while lying on a couch in the office of his co-director, Lee Unkrich.

11. THE CEO OF DISNEY THOUGHT FINDING NEMO WOULD BE A FAILURE.

The combination of a poorly cast Marlin, an unsympathetic Gill, and the running flashbacks made the earliest versions of Finding Nemo feel pretty dismal. Still, nobody was quite as defeatist as Michael Eisner, the Walt Disney Company's then-chief executive officer. Eisner predicted the underwater adventure would be a “reality check” for the yet unchallenged Pixar. Eisner’s only positive spin was that a commercial struggle would be helpful during contract renegotiations with the Disney subsidiary. Of course, Eisner’s judgment, and fund-cutting aspirations, came up short when Finding Nemo became Pixar’s highest grossing film (a superlative it would maintain until the release of Toy Story 3 in 2010).

12. THE MOVIE’S POPULARITY LED TO POPULATION STRESS FOR CLOWNFISH.

Children were so taken with the adorable Nemo following the release of the film that demand for clownfish as pets instantly skyrocketed. Excessive capture and sale of the ocean dwellers led to a steep decline in the organic population of the species; some natural habitats, such as the waters surrounding Vanuatu, saw a 75 percent drop in clownfish numbers.

13. THE MOVIE ALSO LED TO SOME MISGUIDED FISH LIBERATION MOVEMENTS.

On the other hand, Finding Nemo’s anti-tank agenda did provoke a few ecologically-minded viewers to set their aquatic captives free. Unfortunately, not everyone took the necessary steps to ensure that their newly liberated pet fish were being transported to amenable waters. Certain marine communities suffered from the introduction of predatory and venomous species in unnatural locales, resulting in, once again, ecological imbalance.

14. SEVERAL ORGANIZATIONS RELEASED “ANTI-FLUSHING” PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENTS FOLLOWING FINDING NEMO.

While tanked fish Gill’s proclamation that “all drains lead to the ocean” contains a grain of truth, the movie fails to acknowledge the fact that a flushed fish is unlikely to survive a trip down the typical drain. Water treatment company JWC Environmental and Australia’s Marine Aquarium Council were among those to offer public warnings that flushing would prove fatal to any pet fish. The former organization suggested that a movie that realistically portrayed a household sea creature’s voyage through the municipal sewage system would be more accurately titled "Grinding Nemo."

15. A CHILDREN’S BOOK AUTHOR UNSUCCESSFULLY ACCUSEDFINDING NEMO'S CREATORS OF PLAGIARISM.

A year before the release of Finding Nemo, French author Franck Le Calvez self-published the children’s book Pierrot Le Poisson-Clown, featuring a young clownfish on a quest to reunite with his estranged mother. (In fact, Le Calvez first wrote the story as a screenplay in 1995, but was unable to generate interest in the concept.) After Pixar’s admittedly similar tale hit theaters, Le Calvez sued the studio for copyright infringement, but lost two lawsuits and wasordered to pay $80,000 in damages and court costs.

FINDING NEMO

"Finding Nemo" has all of the usual pleasures of the Pixar animation style--the comedy and wackiness of "Toy Story" or "Monsters Inc." or "A Bug's Life." And it adds an unexpected beauty, a use of color and form that makes it one of those rare movies where I wanted to sit in the front row and let the images wash out to the edges of my field of vision. The movie takes place almost entirely under the sea, in the world of colorful tropical fish--the flora and fauna of a shallow warm-water shelf not far from Australia. The use of color, form and movement make the film a delight even apart from its story.

There is a story, though, one of those Pixar inventions that involves kids on the action level while adults are amused because of the satire and human (or fishy) comedy. The movie involves the adventures of little Nemo, a clown fish born with an undersized fin and an oversized curiosity. His father, Marlin, worries obsessively over him, because Nemo is all he has left: Nemo's mother and all of her other eggs were lost to barracudas. When Nemo goes off on his first day of school, Marlin warns him to stay with the class and avoid the dangers of the drop-off to deep water, but Nemo forgets, and ends up as a captive in the salt-water aquarium of a dentist in Sydney. Marlin swims off bravely to find his missing boy, aided by Dory, a blue tang with enormous eyes who he meets along the way.

These characters are voiced by actors whose own personal mannerisms are well known to us; I recognized most of the voices, but even the unidentified ones carried buried associations from movie roles, and so somehow the fish take on qualities of human personalities. Marlin, for example, is played by Albert Brooks as an overprotective, neurotic worrywart, and Dory is Ellen DeGeneres as helpful, cheerful and scatterbrained (she has a problem with short-term memory). The Pixar computer animators, led by writer-director Andrew Stanton, create an undersea world that is just a shade murky, as it should be; we can't see as far or as sharply in sea water, and so threats materialize more quickly, and everything has a softness of focus. There is something dreamlike about the visuals of "Finding Nemo," something that evokes the reverie of scuba-diving.

The picture's great inspiration is to leave the sea by transporting Nemo to that big tank in the dentist's office. In it we meet other captives, including the Moorish Idol fish Gill (voice by Willem Dafoe), who are planning an escape. Now it might seem to us that there is no possible way a fish can escape from an aquarium in an office and get out of the window and across the highway and into the sea, but there is no accounting for the ingenuity of these creatures, especially since they have help from a conspirator on the outside--a pelican with the voice of Geoffrey Rush.

It may occur to you that many pelicans make a living by eating fish, not rescuing them, but some of the characters in this movie have evolved admirably into vegetarians. As Marlin and Dory conduct their odyssey, for example, they encounter three carnivores who have formed a chapter of Fish-Eaters Anonymous, and chant slogans to remind them that they abstain from fin-based meals.

The first scenes in "Finding Nemo" are a little unsettling, as we realize the movie is going to be about fish, not people (or people-based characters like toys and monsters). But of course animation has long since learned to enlist all other species in the human race, and to care about fish quickly becomes as easy as caring about mice or ducks or Bambi.

When I review a movie like "Finding Nemo," I am aware that most members of its primary audience do not read reviews. Their parents do, and to them and adults who do not have children as an excuse, I can say that "Finding Nemo" is a pleasure for grown-ups. There are jokes we get that the kids don't, and the complexity of Albert Brooks' neuroses, and that enormous canvas filled with creatures that have some of the same hypnotic beauty as--well, fish in an aquarium. They may appreciate another novelty: This time the dad is the hero of the story, although in most animation it is almost always the mother.

The Dirty Truth About 'Finding Nemo'

As we've mentioned several times before, Disney movies are far from the innocent cartoons they pretend to be. And Pixar, which joined Disney in 2006, isn't slacking on their end, either.

Take Finding Nemo. It's a heartfelt father-and-son story in which an entire family of clownfish (Amphiprion ocellaris) is viciously devoured by a barracuda, and then the son is abducted by scuba divers and forced into performing peepshows for a sociopathic human child.

"Well, son, doom surrounds us 360 degrees and 24/7, but thankfully we're evolutionarily unequipped
to truly comprehend the gravity of our situation."

Marlin, the father of the titular clownfish, goes on a harrowing journey to rescue his son. With the help of Ellen DeGeneres the Fish, Marlin outsmarts sharks, whales, hungry birds, and jellyfish. Nemo and Marlin are reunited and -- with their odyssey over -- live happily ever after.

Disturbingly happily ever after.

We touched on this topic briefly before, ignorant of the implications -- but sometimes ignorance is bliss. You see, a clownfish colony -- which doesn't stray far from its anemone host -- is dominated byone male and one female. These two are the only ones who are trading fluids in the entire group. Why? Because all clownfish are born male. Why? Because Mother Nature is one crazy broad.

Seriously, lady, there are children here.

Naturally, the next question is "Where did that male clownfish get his woman bits from?" Well, clownfish are sequential hermaphrodites, meaning that the male can transform himself into an intoxicating lady quicker than Wesley Snipes in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar.

"This is my daywalker disguise."

So what does this mean for Finding Nemo? Well, when the female in the colony dies or disappears, the dominant male will change into the dominant female, and the fish who was waiting in line behind him takes over as the new top guy.

Remember that Nemo's mom became fish food in the first act, along with all of Nemo's brothers. This makes Marlin the dominant male, and Nemo the second-most dominant. Are you starting to pick up what we're putting down, preferably while wearing latex gloves?

You know that tiny fish egg that Marlin nurtured, cared for, and almost died for? Yup, he was totally just trying to get his son home so they could repopulate their colony.

In other words, once Marlin rescued Nemo from that Australian dentist, he basically led his son to the anemone boudoir, popped on "Lemon Incest" by Serge Gainsbourg, spread his new ladylike fins, and bellowed "TODAY YOU BECOME A MAN AND THE MAN OF THE HOUSE."

We're going to go scrub ourselves clean now. With steel wool.

And given the fact that Pixar meticulously researched marine life for Finding Nemo, someone during the production process must have realized, "Hey, we're totally making a more fucked-up version ofOedipus Rex starring fish."

We're not going to grouse about biological accuracy here -- this is a movie with a talking sea turtle, after all -- but if you're going to make a heartwarming G-rated animated flick about a father-son duo of anthropomorphized fish, maybe you shouldn't choose a species that bangs the shit out of its relatives during an emergency. Likewise, this knowledge makes Finding Nemo on Ice a billion times more mind-shattering than it normally is.