Pixar's Dual Reveals
Pixar Unveils 'Loving Dory' Short and Original 'Gatto' Feature at Annecy Festival
Key Points
Loving Dory's director, Lou Hamou-Lhadj, has an Oscar-nominated pedigree (Borrowed Time, 2015) and has contributed to multiple Pixar projects, underscoring the experienced leadership guiding the new short.
Gatto is being developed as a Venice-set original feature with production notes indicating a Spring 2027 timeframe, signaling Pixar's continued push into original storytelling alongside the Nemo universe.
Gatto's cast includes notable performers: Nero is voiced by Mark Ruffalo, the mob boss Rocco by Laurence Fishburne, and Saverio the pigeon is voiced by director Enrico Casarosa, highlighting a high-profile talent lineup for the project.
Gatto is described as Venice-inspired with a distinctive hand-painted visual style, marking a notable artistic direction for Pixar's original feature slate.
Annecy previews included concept art and behind-the-scenes glimpses, with excerpts from the screenplay shown to audiences to illustrate Loving Dory and Gatto's development at the festival.
Pixar crashed the Annecy International Animation Film Festival on June 26 with a surprise announcement: a new theatrical short called *Loving Dory*, set in the world of *Finding Nemo*. Director Lou Hamou-Lhadj and producer Mary Alice Drumm staged a playful "stage-crash" reveal, according to Laughing Place, marking the first time Pixar has brought a *Nemo*-universe short to theaters.
The short follows Dory — voiced again by Ellen DeGeneres — as she falls in love with a plastic bag, mistaking it for a sea creature near her coral reef home. Pixar also offered a deep look at *Gatto*, an original Venice-set feature due March 5, 2027, with Mark Ruffalo and Laurence Fishburne leading the voice cast.
Dory Falls for a Plastic Bag in New Short
*Loving Dory* is the first Pixar theatrical short set in the *Finding Nemo* world, though no release date has been set yet. The *Finding Nemo* franchise has earned roughly $1.9 billion worldwide across two films, making Dory one of Pixar's most bankable characters, according to Animation Magazine.
Director Lou Hamou-Lhadj said he picked Dory because she "gives everyone permission to have fun." He is no stranger to Pixar — he is an Oscar nominee for the 2015 short *Borrowed Time* and has worked on *WALL-E* and *Toy Story 3*. Producer Mary Alice Drumm, a veteran of *Brave*, *Coco*, and *Elio*, confirmed that composer Thomas Newman will also return, according to The Movie Blog.
Gatto's Venice Cat World Wows Annecy Crowds
Alongside the *Loving Dory* reveal, director Enrico Casarosa showed finished scenes from *Gatto* at Annecy. The film follows Nero, a scrappy black street cat in Venice, who gets tangled up with feline mob boss Rocco. Cartoon Brew called it "Pixar's most visually ambitious feature in years."
Casarosa described the look as a "hand-painted, painterly" style where audiences feel they are "walking into a Van Gogh painting," according to TheWrap. The film was selected from over 213 visual style submissions. It uses a 2.39:1 widescreen format and will occasionally drop frame rates to heighten the handcrafted feel. Casarosa himself voices Saverio, a fast-talking pigeon described as a "union labor advocate."
A-List Cast and a March 2027 Release for Gatto
*Gatto* carries a high-profile voice lineup. Mark Ruffalo plays Nero, the black cat hero. Laurence Fishburne plays Rocco, a British Shorthair mob boss with a taste for stealing "cat art." The film was moved from June 18, 2027, to March 5, 2027, to avoid competing with Sony's *Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse*, according to JoBlo.
Pixar first teased the project at Annecy 2025 and released a teaser trailer on June 11, 2026. The March date gives *Gatto* an early spring window with less direct competition, a strategic move as Pixar also prepares *Toy Story 5* for 2026 and *Incredibles 3* for 2028.
Pixar Bets on Franchises While Protecting Original Work
Pixar is pairing *Loving Dory* with *Gatto* as a deliberate strategy. A familiar franchise short draws audiences to a new original film — a classic Hollywood tactic. The studio shifted its approach in March 2026, moving from "two originals for every sequel" to "two sequels for every original," following weaker box office results for films like *Lightyear* and *Elio*, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Not everyone at Pixar agrees with the direction. Director Brad Bird has publicly refused to make *Ratatouille 2*, saying, "No, we told that story." Meanwhile, Laughing Place noted that *Loving Dory*'s plastic bag plot doubles as a subtle nod to ocean pollution — an "absurd" but pointed environmental message in the spirit of *WALL-E*.
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