This summer, the popular Nick Jr. series Dora the Explorer is making the big jump to live-action with its first theatrical movie. Isabela Moner straps on the purple backpack to go on a journey through the jungle to save her missing parents and find a lost city of gold. Danger, friendship, and foxes dressed as burglars abound! Check out the first trailer for Dora and the Lost City of Gold right now.
Just about anything with a recognizable IP is getting the movie treatment these days and that's especially true for Dora the Explorer. The iconic children's education series was one of the longest running programs on Nick Jr. and it spun off a number of series, specials, and TV movies over the course of its 172-episode run.
Given the fourth-wall breaking nature of the show and its very specific format, it's fair to say that some people were curious how a live-action movie would work. Would it embrace those elements of the show or would it be a more straight-forward and grounded take on the material? The answer, it seems, is a little bit of both. The first trailer for Dora and the Lost City of Gold dropped last night and it presents a Dora who is more adept at navigating the literal jungle than the jungle of high school.
The new trailer lays out the basics of the plot. The film follows Dora (Moner), an energetic but reckless teenage explorer who is sent to high school by her parents (Michael Peña and Eva Longoria) to meet kids her own age. While Dora has trouble fitting in, she and some of her classmates are dragged back to the jungle in order to save her parents and find a mythical city of gold.
This trailer is a pretty solid confirmation that Dora is shooting for a younger target audience and it looks fun for that age group! It's silly and over the top, which is certainly a good tone to have when your main character hangs around with a monkey and keeps flare guns in her backpack instead of textbooks.
My only gripe is that Boots the Monkey isn't wearing any boots. Is he named Boots just because it's cute? #NotMyBoots
The only other thing missing from this trailer is Swiper the Fox. The kleptomaniac fox is voiced by Benicio del Toro, but it looks like the marketing team is saving the reveal of what Swiper looks and sounds like for a rainy day.
Regardless, you can watch Dora and the Lost City of Gold when it arrives in theaters on August 2, 2019. There's still quite a few months of movies left to go before then, and you can learn about each and every one of them in our handy 2019 movie release guide.
