SpongeBob Squarepants is back. It’s been five years since the last movie featuring the iconic undersea sponge was released, but he’s set to return to the big screen next year in The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run. The first trailer has now been released.
The movie is a prequel to the classic Nickelodeon show and focuses on SpongeBob’s attempts to find Gary the Snail, his beloved pet, who has gone missing. So SpongeBob and Patrick (who is also Gary’s cousin) hit the road, and end up in the Lost City of Atlantic City, which, as the name suggests, is a glittering underwater gambling metropolis. The animation might be more sophisticated than it was in the original series, but it looks every bit as bizarre and hilarious. Oh, and Keanu Reeves is in there too, playing a sage made of sage called Sage. Check it out below:
The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run is directed by Tim Hill, who also made 2004’s The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie and was one of the main writers on the original show. All the regular voicecast are back, including Tom Kenny as SpongeBob, Bill Fagerbakke as Patrick, Rodger Bumpass as Squidward, and Clancy Brown as Eugene H. Krabs. The movie hits theaters on May 22 2020, having been moved up from its initial release date of July 17.
Sponge on the Run isn’t the only new SpongeBob release on the way. Nickelodeon parent company Viacom has struck a huge deal with Netflix to license many of its characters to the streaming giant, and according to reports, a “music-based project” based around Squidward is one of the shows in development.
SpongeBob Squarepants premiered in 1999, and it continues to be made, with Season 13 announced in July this year. The show was created by Stephen Hillenburg, who died in 2018.