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Clear the breakwater: Willy is getting another chance to make a splash.
Free Willy is the latest title being added to Hollywood’s seemingly never-ending list of reboots, according to an announcement earlier this week.
Warner Bros. and the Russo brothers’ company AGBO are teaming up, and many details remain up in the air — including how they plan to cast the titular whale.
Released in 1993, Free Willy follows an orphaned boy who becomes friends with a captive orca at a marine park, eventually helping with his escape. It’s a tear-jerker likely etched into the minds of many.
The film, which starred a real orca named Keiko “blew the lid off the captivity industry,” said Camille Labchuk, executive director of Animal Justice, a national advocacy organization in Canada.
The story of Keiko
Labchuck says the beloved film inspired and motivated ’90s kids to help animals.
“People were forced to confront the reality of what that captivity meant, and the cost and the toll it exerted on those beautiful creatures,” she said, noting places like SeaWorld and Marineland that confined aquatic creatures like orcas or belugas or dolphins in tanks for years.
The original film’s legacy is closely tied with real-word controversy surrounding its star.
After it became a box office hit, there was a massive public push to get Keiko out of his real-life tank in Mexico.
He became the first captive whale to have a sanctuary program made for him. He was eventually moved to a netted-off Icelandic cove before his ultimate release into the open sea, when he swam to Norway. Keiko died of pneumonia in December 2003, remaining the only captive orca to be reintroduced into the wild.
But as Labchuk points out, Keiko’s ending wasn’t happy.
Because he was captured as a baby, he never fully managed to reintegrate with a wild pod. It’s a reality, she says, that reshaped how so many people view captivity today and why she thinks a real Willy in the new film is “highly unlikely.”
Will Willy be a real whale this time?
VFX experts like Mark Hammond, a VFX supervisor at Toronto-based VFX studio Mr. X says “there is no way that is going to happen.” Largely, because of changing laws and over 30 years of technology advancement since the first film.
In Canada, Ontario banned future captivity of orcas in 2015 following reports of animal mistreatment out of Marineland, and the country’s last captive orca passed away there in 2023, after spending over a decade in confinement.
In 2019, a law was passed banning all whale and dolphin captivity and breeding across Canada, and some laws have tightened in the U.S. too.
California passed an Orca Protection Act in 2016 following intense public scrutiny sparked by the 2013 documentary Blackfish, which exposed how the trauma of captivity can lead to tragedy.
The 30 remaining Marineland beluga whales are one step closer to relocation. Fisheries and Oceans Canada endorsed a rescue plan that would send the animals to four aquariums in the U.S. and one in Spain. The whales have been cared for by Marineland staff since the amusement park’s closure in 2024.
Hammond, who worked on projects like the TV series Wednesday and The Boys, as well as Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, says shifting to a digital Willy could completely change how the film is made.
“When you take something over in CGI, it becomes an actor, right? We can make it do exactly what you want it to do and we can get performances you want,” he said, adding that the first movie was likely bound by Keiko’s mood and temperament.
Hammond also thinks technology could help tell a more honest story.
“If the story does go the route of showing, I guess in an even darker way, how bad Willy was treated in captivity … maybe there is a world where VFX and CGI is really helping tell that story.”
For Hammond, seeing the reality behind the beloved original changed his perspective on it as an adult.
“As soon as you find out the fact that like, when their upper fin is curled over that means they’re distressed, … yeah, you watch Free Willy entirely differently.”
OG fans slam reboot
Fans of the original film are voicing their frustration online. Many say the original should be left alone and doesn’t need a refresh.
“Is nothing sacred anymore in Hollywood?” one user wrote on X.
“Literally nobody asked for this reboot,” wrote another.
“Writers can’t come up with anything original, let’s keep recycling old ideas,” a third wrote on Reddit.
WATCH | Free Willy trailer:
Still, Labchuck says she’s excited about the announcement and hopes the new film will “spark a global conversation” about the ethics of marine animal captivity.
“I think films like Free Willy and Blackfish are such a powerful driver of public opinion, and public opinion ultimately drives our laws.”
