Angus MacLane Co-Directing Finding Dory With Andrew Stanton

Though Cars 2 fizzled and Monsters University didn’t really offer much to Monsters Inc. fans, Pixar has proven with Toy Story 2 and Toy Story 3 that it understands how to make great sequels. So we’re holding out hope for Finding Dory, a sequel to Oscar winner Finding Nemo, especially because the first film’s director, Andrew Stanton, is back on board. Unfortunately, we won’t get to see it until 2016 because of The Good Dinosaur getting delayed and moved to Dory‘s spot, but at least we’ve got some interesting news about the film to tide us over.

While tweeting about an amusing LEGO creation, Stanton let slip that Pixar veteran Angus MacLane is co-directing Finding Dory with him:

From my co-director’s clever Lego “couch” series: “@AngusMacLane: Tony Stark having a drink on a couch, in LEGO. http://t.co/uw6oyALe36”

— andrew stanton (@andrewstanton) June 5, 2014

Yes, Stanton doesn’t say outright that Finding Dory is the project that he’s co-directing with MacLane, who previously directed Halloween special “Toy Story of Terror,” but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out, given that Stanton isn’t working on anything else at the moment. MacLane has been around Pixar for years and has been involved in some capacity on every film from the studio since A Bug’s Life. It’s about time he stepped up to the big leagues and took on a project like this.

We don’t know that much about Finding Dory‘s plot, but it’s set one year after the events of Finding Nemo off the coast of California and focuses on the titular, amnesiac Pacific regal blue tang (voiced by Ellen DeGeneres) being reunited with her family.

Martin (Albert Brooks), Gill (Willem Dafoe) and Deb (Vicki Lewis), tank buddies of Nemo’s in the first film, are returning, and it’s expected that Nemo and other main characters will reprise their roles. Diane Keaton voices Jenny, Dory’s mother, and Eugene Levy is her father Charlie. Ty Burrell voices Bailey, a beluga whale, and Kaitlin Olson is voicing Dory’s adopted sister, a killer whale.

Finding Dory arrives on June 17th, 2016.