DreamWorks Forgotten Island (2026) Movie Cast: Meet H.E.R. as Jo and Liza Soberano as Raissa
I’ll be honest: I didn’t expect to get emotional over an animated movie’s cast list. Then I saw who’s playing the two leads in DreamWorks’ Forgotten Island, and suddenly I was texting friends at midnight like a maniac.
This is DreamWorks Animation’s 50th feature. It hits U.S. theaters on September 25, 2026 via Universal Pictures. A milestone film could easily have been a safe, shiny franchise entry. Instead, the studio went for something personal: a coming-of-age adventure soaked in Philippine mythology and 90s nostalgia. I’m way more into that than I’d be for another sequel.
Who Voices Raww the Weredog in Forgotten Island? Voice Cast Revealed
The Setup: One Last Night, One Terrible Trade
Two best friends, Jo and Raissa, have just graduated high school in the 1990s Philippines. It’s their final night together before life pulls them in different directions. Anyone who’s had that specific ache of ‘this is the last time things will feel like this’ already knows why this hooks me.
Then they find a hidden portal and get yanked to Nakali, an island nobody remembers exists. It’s crawling with creatures from the stories they grew up on, so it should feel like home. It doesn’t, because Nakali eats memories. Worse, the price of leaving is forgetting each other completely. Every shared joke, every inside reference, every summer, gone.
So the ticking clock in this movie isn’t a bomb or an evil army. It’s the friendship itself. That’s a smart, slightly brutal way to make a kids’ adventure hit adults in the chest, and it’s the reason I’m paying attention.
Meet the Voice Cast
| Character | Voiced By | Why It Caught My Eye |
|---|---|---|
| Jo | H.E.R. | Part-Filipino, Grammy and Oscar winner, and a musician with real emotional range |
| Raissa | Liza Soberano | Filipino star with a fast-growing Hollywood résumé |
| Raww | Dave Franco | A well-meaning, hopelessly clumsy weredog. Perfect casting |
| Batiba | Jenny Slate | Small, fiercely loyal, and Slate does chaotic sweetness better than anyone |
| Bungi | Manny Jacinto | Comedy plus heroic energy, and I’m still a Good Place stan |
| The Dreaded Manananggal | Lea Salonga | Disney royalty playing the island’s scariest monster |
| Lola Fatima | Dolly de Leon | BAFTA nominee, and yes, please |
| Datu | Jo Koy | Big comedy presence |
| Truffle Wuffle | Ronny Chieng | The name alone sells me |
The Leads
H.E.R. as Jo makes sense the second you think about it. Her whole career runs on raw, vulnerable feeling, and Jo is a teenager staring down the edge of adulthood. That’s a soft spot she already knows how to voice. Liza Soberano as Raissa gives the film its other half. Soberano was in Lisa Frankenstein not long ago, and now she’s headlining a major animated release. If the two of them click, and everything suggests they will, the movie’s emotional engine is covered.
The Villain Casting Is a Flex
Let’s talk about Lea Salonga voicing the Manananggal. This is the woman behind Disney’s Jasmine and Mulan singing voices, and now she’s playing the terror of Nakali. That’s a delicious reversal. The Manananggal is one of the most nightmarish figures in Filipino folklore — upper body detaches, flies off at night, you get the idea — and giving it to someone with Salonga’s theatrical weight tells me this villain won’t be a cardboard threat.
The Filmmakers and That Look
Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado co-wrote and directed. They’re the team behind Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, the movie that made a lot of us realize DreamWorks was done playing it safe with visuals. Mercado is Filipino-American, and that matters here. This isn’t an outsider borrowing folklore for aesthetics.
The animation reportedly blends 2D techniques with anime influences, which sounds trippy in the best way and fits an island that literally messes with your mind. Nathan Matthew David composes the score. The soundtrack mixes 90s-era tracks with modern P-pop heavyweights BINI and SB19. A DreamWorks movie putting P-pop on a global soundtrack is not something I had on my 2026 bingo card, and I love it.
Why the Folklore Matters
The film pulls from the Kapre, the Tikbalang, and the Manananggal. If you didn’t grow up with those, think tree-dwelling giants, horse-headed tricksters, and flying horrors that split in half. Western audiences have seen endless Greek gods and Norse hammers. Filipino myth has barely had a turn on this scale.
What excites me is the budget and respect angle. Mainline DreamWorks resources are being spent on these stories, not a tiny side project. Online communities have been buzzing about exactly that, and I get it. When a culture’s monsters finally get big-screen treatment, it feels like a door opening.
My Only Worries
Nothing’s perfect before release, so here’s where I’m keeping my fingers crossed:
- Pacing: A big ensemble means some characters could get shortchanged. I want Raww and Batiba to matter, not just show up for one-liners.
- The emotional payoff: The memory-loss premise sets up a brutal ending. If the film chickens out, I’ll be annoyed.
- The 90s setting: Please make it feel lived-in, not just a checklist of references.
Should You Care?
If you love animated films that pair jokes with a real lump in your throat, yes. If you’re tired of every family movie looking the same, yes. If you just want to hear H.E.R., Liza Soberano, Lea Salonga, and Dave Franco in one adventure, obviously yes.
Forgotten Island opens September 25, 2026. I’ll be in the theater that weekend, probably with a friend I’d hate to forget.
