Lupita Nyong’o Teams Up With How To Train Your Dragon Director For The Wild Robot Trailer

I’m not crying, you are! Look, maybe it’s just the power of “What a Wonderful World” or the crushing emotional weight of seeing a robot getting along with nature in a way our self-destructive species never will, but if a mere trailer is threatening to start the waterworks already, “The Wild Robot” could end up being something special, indeed. The mostly dialogue-free footage focuses on a robot named Roz (short for ROZZUM unit 7134, of course) that crash-lands on an island teeming with wildlife and slowly finds its place among the animals. And if that somehow wasn’t enough to appeal to the softies among us, the story also appears to involve Roz adopting a cute little gosling named Brightbill. If that doesn’t pull directly at the heartstrings, nothing will!

Based on the 2016 book by author Peter Brown, “The Wild Robot” stars the great Lupita Nyong’o as the voice of Roz and includes an absurdly talented cast of supporting actors. There’s Pedro Pascal as a fox named Fink, Catherine O’Hara as the opossum Pinktail, Bill Nighy as the goose Longneck, Kit Connor as the baby goose Brightbill, and Stephanie Hsu as a mysterious character named Vontra. Oh, and then there’s the trio of Mark freaking Hamill, Matt Berry, and “Mission: Impossible” veteran Ving Rhames in undisclosed roles, as well. Literally the only drawback here is that we’ll have to wait a little while longer to see it, as the animated film arrives in theaters September 20, 2024.

The epic adventure follows the journey of a robot—ROZZUM unit 7134, “Roz” for short — that is shipwrecked on an uninhabited island and must learn to adapt to the harsh surroundings, gradually building relationships with the animals on the island and becoming the adoptive parent of an orphaned gosling.