<P> In a July 2013 interview with Los Angeles Times, Stanton spoke of the sequel's origin: "There was polite inquiry from Disney (about a Finding Nemo sequel). I was always' No sequels, no sequels .' But I had to get on board from a VP standpoint . (Sequels) are part of the necessity of our staying afloat, but we don't want to have to go there for those reasons . We want to go there creatively, so we said (to Disney),' Can you give us the timeline about when we release them? Because we'd like to release something we actually want to make, and we might not come up with it the year you want it ."' </P> <P> In a 2016 interview Stanton stated how the film's story came to be; "I don't watch my films that often after they're done because I have to watch them so many times before they come out . So about 2010 when we were getting Finding Nemo ready for the 10 - year re-release in 3D, it was interesting to watch again after all that time . Something kind of got lodged in the back of my brain and started to sort of stew . I started to think about how easily Dory could get lost and not find Marlin and Nemo again . She basically was in the same state that she was when Marlin found her . I didn't know where she was from . I knew that she had spent most of her youth wandering the ocean alone, and I wanted to know that she could find her new family, if she ever got lost again . It's almost like the parental side of me was worried ." Stanton additionally stated: "I knew if I ever said Finding Dory or mentioned a sequel to Finding Nemo out loud, I'd be done, (T) here would be no way I'd be able to put that horse back in the barn . So I kept it very quiet until I knew I had a story that I thought would hold, and that was in early 2012 . So I pitched it to John Lasseter and he was all into it . Then I got a writer, and once we had a treatment that we kind of liked, I felt comfortable calling Ellen ." </P> <P> Stanton selected Victoria Strouse to write the screenplay . She later said, "It was always collaborative with Andrew, but really the screenwriting was me . Of course, Andrew would do passes, and he and I would brainstorm a lot together and then we would bring it to the group of story artists . People would weigh in and share ideas ." She pointed to Dory's forgetfulness as a challenge when writing the script, adding, "You don't realize until you sit down to write a character who can't remember things how integral memory is to absolutely everything we do, and that's what creates a narrative that people can follow . When a main character can't self - reflect and can't tell a story, that character is very difficult to design because she can't really lead . To get her to be able to lead and to get an audience to be able to trust her was the hardest thing to do ." </P> <P> The fictional Marine Life Institute depicted extensively in the film is based on the production team's research trips to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the Marine Mammal Center and the Vancouver Aquarium . </P>

Who plays dory's mom in finding dory