Bradley Cooper, Ayo Edebiri Join Bong Joon Ho’s ‘Ally’

Bong Joon Ho has been quietly building something extraordinary beneath the ocean — and now we know who’s giving it a voice. The Oscar-winning director of Parasite unveiled the voice cast for his first animated feature, Ally, on the opening day of the Cannes Film Festival, and the lineup is genuinely surprising: Bradley Cooper, Ayo Edebiri, Dave Bautista, Finn Wolfhard, Rachel House, Werner Herzog, and newcomer Alex Jayne Go.

Go leads the casting announcement, which strongly suggests she’s voicing Ally herself — a curious, endearing piglet squid living in the uncharted depths of the South Pacific Ocean. Ally dreams of one day seeing the sun and becoming the star of a wildlife documentary. When a mysterious aircraft sinks into her habitat, her peaceful world is thrown into chaos, and she’s thrust into an epic journey to the surface alongside a colorful cast of unlikely companions. The film explores themes of friendship and courage, with encounters between the creatures of the deep and the human world reshaping both sides.

A Dream Cast for a Dream Project

Bong has been developing Ally since 2019, and the passion project has clearly attracted serious talent. Cooper, a 12-time Oscar nominee, returns to animated voice work for the first time since playing Rocket Raccoon across Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy franchise. Edebiri, fresh off her The Bear breakout, is also at Cannes this week for the premiere of Clarissa — another Neon title — in the Directors’ Fortnight section. Bautista brings his Dune gravitas, Wolfhard his Stranger Things familiarity, and House, who voiced a memorable role in Moana, adds yet more animated pedigree to the ensemble.

And then there’s Werner Herzog. The legendary German filmmaker’s deeply accented Bavarian baritone joining a family animated adventure about a piglet squid is exactly the kind of casting choice that makes Bong Joon Ho unmistakably Bong Joon Ho.

The screenplay was co-written by Bong and Jason Yu, the South Korean filmmaker behind the 2023 horror film Sleep. Producing is Seo Woo-sik, a frequent Bong collaborator who also produced Mother (2009) and Okja (2017).

The Team Behind the Visuals

The 3D animation is being handled by DNEG, the VFX studio behind Inception and Dune, with a creative team drawing from 12 countries. Animation supervisor Jae Hyung Kim worked on Toy Story 4 and Inside Out. David Lipman, a veteran of the Shrek franchise, serves as supervising producer. And production designer Marcin Jakubowski comes from the acclaimed Netflix animated film Klaus. The pedigree here is serious.

Korean industry sources have pegged Ally‘s budget at around $60 million — which would make it the most expensive feature ever produced in South Korea. That number alone signals how much ambition is behind this project.

Neon and Bong, Reunited

Neon has signed on to release Ally in North American theaters in 2027, reuniting the indie distributor with the director whose Parasite they released in 2019 — the film that became the first non-English-language movie to win the Oscar for Best Picture. Outside North America, Pathé will handle France, Benelux, Switzerland, and West Africa, while CJ ENM and Penture Invest will cover South Korea, Vietnam, Turkey, and Indonesia. Pathé is also overseeing international sales at Cannes this week, with the exception of Japan and China.

The film is targeting completion in the first half of 2027, ahead of its global theatrical release later that year. For a director whose last live-action feature, Mickey 17, arrived earlier this year, Ally represents something different — a plunge into an entirely new medium, set in the darkest depths of the ocean, with one of the most eclectic voice casts assembled in recent memory. Werner Herzog and a piglet squid. Only Bong.