Finding Nemo (2003)

Finding Nemo is the fifth Pixar film. The film tells the story of a clownfish named Nemo (voiced by Alexander Gould) who gets abducted from his home in the Great Barrier Reef and winds up in a dentist’s office aquarium. His over-protective father Marlin (voiced by Albert Brooks) who, along with an amnesiac regal tang named Dory (voiced by Ellen DeGeneres), searches for him all the way to Sydney Harbour. Along the way, Marlin learns to take risks and let little Nemo take care of himself.

Finding Dory (2016)

Finding Dory is the seventeenth Pixar film. The film focuses on the amnesiac character Dory (voiced by Ellen DeGeneres), who travels to California to find her long-lost parents, Jenny and Charlie, as well as exploring the idea of her being reunited with her family.^[3] It takes place one year after Finding Nemo and is set off the coast of Morro Bay, California.^[4][5]

Future films

Director Andrew Stanton commented in June 2016 about the possibility of a third Finding Nemo film, stating:

"I really do feel like that this was the missing piece, emotionally, for the first movie. Now, I’ve stopped saying never for anything because there are a lot of new characters that get introduced and we’ve broadened the universe for this movie. And again, I’m very used to seeing that world continue to open up from the Toy Story movies, so I’ve learned to just say, to my knowledge, I think everything that was born of the first movie is wrapped up. But we’ll see. With any of the other sequels, we strive to try and make it seem like it was inevitable, like it was meant to be, that all these extended stories and journeys with these characters were part of the whole canon. And that's really hard, but it's so satisfying for me when I’m experiencing that, whether it's a great second season of a TV show or another book in a series. It's a small club when it's done successfully. Regardless of how much people may vocalize that they don’t enjoy or wish that there weren’t extensions, sometimes it's really nice to go back and spend more time with these characters if they evolve, if they grow, if they expand. So that, I’m very happy with. I feel like it was just as hard, if not harder, on Finding Dory to get it to feel inevitable and preordained, and that it was always of the larger piece."^[6]

Exploring the Reef with Jean-Michel Cousteau (2003)

Exploring the Reef is a short documentary film. It features Jean-Michel Cousteau, exploring the Great Barrier Reef, but Marlin, Dory, and Nemo keep interrupting him. The short film is included on the Finding Nemo DVD.^[7]

Marine Life Interviews (2016)

Marine Life Interviews focuses on some of the supporting characters within Dory as they give brief interviews and thoughts on Dory herself. This is similar to the character interviews for Finding Nemo.

Dory Finding (2021)

Dory Finding shows Dory finding items from the surface in the coral reef. This short is part of the Pixar Popcorn series on Disney+.

Box office performance

Finding Nemo is the second highest-grossing film of 2003, behind The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.^[8] It was the highest-grossing Pixar film, up until 2010 when Toy Story 3 surpassed it.^[9] Finding Dory is the third-highest-grossing film of 2016, behind Civil War and Rogue One.^[10]

Finding Nemo is the 6th highest-grossing animated franchise and holds the third average box office gross per film among all animated franchises in box office history ($983.8million).^[11]

Critical and public response

Video games

Stage musical

Finding Nemo – The Musical is a 40-minute show (performed five times daily), which opened on January 24, 2007 at the Theater in the Wild at Disney's Animal Kingdom in Orlando, Florida. It is a musical adaption of the film with new songs written by Tony Award-winning Avenue Q composer Robert Lopez and his wife, Kristen Anderson-Lopez. It would "combine puppets, dancers, acrobats and animated backdrops".^[38]

Appearance on Fetch! With Ruff Ruffman

In the PBS KIDS Show Fetch! With Ruff Ruffman, Crush the sea turtle appeared as a guest star in the Season 5 episode, "The Ol' Shell Game", voiced again by Andrew Stanton.

Magazine

In August 2016, Egmont Publishing launched a magazine, titled Finding Dory.^[39]

Music

Finding Nemo is the soundtrack album of the film of the same name. Finding Dory is the soundtrack album of the film of the same name. The soundtracks were scored by Thomas Newman.

The score was nominated for the 76th Academy Awards for Best Original Score but lost against The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.^[40][41] It received 5/5 stars from the Film Score Reviews^[42] and 3.5/5 stars from Soundtrack.net.^[43]