Is Forgotten Island based on the Philippines? What DreamWorks took from real Filipino folklore — and from the directors' own families

Forgotten Island opens with karaoke, lechon and a glowing portal, and the portal is the only part anybody had to invent. Everything waiting on the other side has been circulating in the Philippines for centuries.

The film is set in the Philippines in the 1990s and follows Jo (H.E.R.) and Raissa (Liza Soberano), two lifelong friends about to be split up by high school. On their last night together they fall through a portal onto the island of Nakali, where staying costs them their memories of each other. It is the first time a major Hollywood studio has bankrolled a feature built on Filipino folklore and mythology. It opened in Philippine cinemas on 23 September 2026 and in US theatres on 25 September, and it is DreamWorks Animation's 50th film.

The creatures are not invented

Directors Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado, who between them made Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, drew on several distinct regional traditions rather than one generic monster cupboard.

• The Manananggal — a creature that severs its upper body and flies off on bat wings, from the Tagalog verb for separating. Lea Salonga voices the film's version, reworked to devour memories.
• The Tikbalang — a tall, horse-headed trickster known for leading travellers off their path, found across multiple regional traditions.
• The Bakunawa — the moon-swallowing sea serpent of Cebuano myth, traditionally driven off by villagers banging pots and drums during an eclipse.
• The Kapre — tree-dwelling giants who smell of tobacco. The film gives them their own village and, in keeping with the folklore, treats them as neighbours rather than threats.
• The Kataw — water beings with legs and gills instead of a fish tail.
• The Tiyanak, Sarimanok and Bul-ul — an infant-shaped demon, a plumed bird from Maranao tradition in Mindanao, and an Ifugao ancestor figure respectively.

Raww, the shape-shifting weredog voiced by Dave Franco, sits closest to the Sigbin of Visayan folklore. The rest of the voice cast runs through Manny Jacinto, Jenny Slate, Jo Koy, Dolly de Leon, Ronny Chieng, Amielynn Abellera, and Kevin McCann as Prince Mermahn.

What came from the directors' own lives

Mercado is Filipino-American; Crawford's wife, Kathy, is Filipina, and he has two teenage daughters. The pair met as story artists on Kung Fu Panda 2 at DreamWorks in 2011, and their own friendship is the structural engine of the film — retooled, deliberately, as a friendship between two girls.

"I want my daughters to see themselves up on the screen," Crawford told Variety in 2026.

Mercado has said the 1990s setting came directly from his own summer holidays visiting family in the Philippines during that decade, and that the lechon, the karaoke, the jeepneys and the family parties were simply what was already there. Crawford told Animation Scoop the same year that the period gave them "a seed of nostalgia" to build relatability on. Neither wanted the film to stop and explain itself to non-Filipino viewers.

Read more: The Princess Bride ending explained: what the final kiss and the grandfather's last line mean

Why Lea Salonga plays the villain

Mercado's pitch was that the most iconic creature in Filipino mythology deserved the most iconic Filipino voice, and Salonga — the singing voice of Jasmine and Mulan in the 1990s — said yes almost immediately. The directors then worried the part was too thin for her, before realising she agreed the Manananggal did not need much dialogue to be frightening. Salonga listened to H.E.R. and Soberano's recordings and pitched her own performance lower to sit against theirs.

Early screenings suggest it landed. Soberano told ABC News in 2026 that Filipino viewers kept telling her afterwards they felt "even more proud to be a Filipino".

For the record: the portal the girls fall through is shaped like the eight-rayed sun on the Philippine flag, a symbol that predates Spanish rule by centuries.

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