Bong Joon-ho's First Animated Film ALLY Gets July 2027 Release Date

Bong Joon-ho's first animated feature, ALLY, will open in France on July 14, 2027, with theatrical releases in Korea and the United States scheduled for the same month. The release dates, confirmed by producer Barunson C&C and distributor CJ ENM, mark the most concrete signal yet that the film is past its production midpoint and heading into post.

For a director who has worked exclusively in live-action across a career that spans Memories of Murder, Snowpiercer, Parasite, and Mickey 17, the move into feature animation is a meaningful shift in form. The broader context is that ALLY is not a boutique art-house animation but a wide-release global production built around a 12-country crew and a voice cast assembled from Hollywood and international film.

The story

The film follows Ally, a piglet squid living in a deep-sea canyon who dreams of seeing the sun and appearing on television. When an unidentified aircraft crashes into the ocean, Ally and a group of deep-sea fish friends are suddenly pulled into the world above the surface. The premise carries a familiar Bong signature: a creature at the bottom of a hierarchy, curious about a world that hasn't noticed it, forced upward by an external catastrophe.

Yu Jae-sun, who directed the 2023 psychological horror film Sleep, co-wrote the screenplay with Bong.

The cast and crew

The voice cast includes Ayo Edebiri, an Emmy winner known for The Bear; Bradley Cooper and Dave Bautista, both Oscar-associated names; Finn Wolfhard; Rachel House; Alex Jayne Go; and Werner Herzog, the German filmmaker, who takes a voice role. Herzog's casting in particular suggests the film is aiming for a tonal range wider than a standard animated family feature.

On the production side, the crew draws from some of the most technically credible names in Western animation. Kim Jae-hyung, who worked on Toy Story 4 and Inside Out, serves as animation supervisor. Marcin Jakubowski, production designer on Netflix's Klaus, handles the visual language of the film. David Lipman, a producer on the first two Shrek films, is also attached.

DNEG, the VFX studio behind Inception and Dune, is handling the film's visual effects work. Their involvement signals an ambition for the kind of large-scale, technically demanding imagery that has been unusual in Korean-originated animation.

Distribution

The distribution structure reflects how seriously the project's backers are treating its global prospects. In Korea, CJ ENM and the Penture K-Content Fund are handling investment and distribution, with those two partners also covering Vietnam, Turkey, and Indonesia. Pathé Films, one of France's oldest and largest studios, has taken on co-investment and distribution for France, Benelux, Switzerland, and parts of West Africa. NEON, the U.S. distributor that brought Parasite to North American audiences and has a track record with Palme d'Or and Academy Award winners, will handle the U.S. release.

The choice of NEON is worth noting. The company built its reputation on prestige acquisitions rather than studio-level tentpoles, and having them on board positions ALLY as a film that expects critical attention alongside box-office performance. Whether Bong's first animation can carry both expectations is a question July 2027 will answer.