If you were to dream up a perfect storyline for younger moviegoers this summer, you really couldn’t do better than “the PAW Patrol rescue pooches visit a mysterious dinosaur island!” That’s precisely the appealing premise of PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie, the third chapter in the beloved franchise's cinematic canon, which opened in theaters on Friday, August 14.
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| PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie [©2026 Paramount Pictures] |
Directed and co-written by the talented Cal Brunker, who also helmed the two previous features, PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie finds the show’s famous pups Chase, Marshall, Skye, Rubble, Rocky, Marshall, Zuma and Everest in an exciting adventure where they come upon a lost world of dinosaurs after their ship gets lost in a storm. Longtime collaborator Bob Barlen co-wrote the screenplay, which is based on the hit animated preschool show created by Keith Chapman, first introduced in the summer of 2013. The voice cast includes Carter Young, McKenna Grace, Terry Crews, Meredith MacNeill, Ron Pardo, Jennifer Hudson, Rain Janjua, Hayden Chemberlen, Fortune Feimster, Jameela Jamil, Bil Nye, Paris Hilton and Snoop Dogg!
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| Jurassic Bark: ‘PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie’ finds the popular canines stranded on a mysterious island where they meet some new friends. The voice cast includes Paris Hilton, Jennifer Hudson, Terry Crews, Snoop Dogg and Bill Nye, and the soundtrack features a new song by Backstreet Boys! |
Perseverance Pays Off
“I think this one is the best of the three movies,” Brunker told Animation Magazine in a recent interview for the publication's July 2026 issue. “It’s also my favorite because I’m somebody who has loved dinosaurs all my life. It’s been a dream to get to make a movie with the pups and dinosaurs together.”
The director, whose credits also include The Nut Job 2, Escape from Planet Earth, Son of Bigfoot and Bigfoot Family, explains that each PAW Patrol outing explores a different movie genre. “They each give us a new playground to play,” he notes. “The first movie was a trip to the city, while the second feature was a superhero movie, and now, with the third one, we have a dinosaur/jungle theme going on. Obviously, the show has played around with Rex and dinosaurs before, so when that possibility came up, I just jumped at it.”
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| PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie [©2026 Paramount Pictures] |
The new adventure began about three and half years ago, when Brunker and his team at Montreal’s Mikros Animation, which also worked on the previous two movies, got the greenlight. “We have an incredible team at Mikros, and they’re my favorite studio in the whole world to work with,” says Brunker. “I think this is the best work they’ve done, and everyone’s really proud of how the movie looks.”
One of the big goalposts for the team was making the jungle backgrounds look designed and not simply generic and noisy as seen in many other children’s animated fare. “We didn’t want it to look like flat wallpaper, so we worked very closely with our production designer Peter Chan and our art director Pierre-Antoine Moelo for a more designed and intentional feel,” says Brunker. “When you look back at some of the classic Disney 2D jungle backgrounds, you notice that they always had these great shapes. They weren’t just this mess of a repetitive, green background. We had this big technical ask from Mikros to create a moving jungle. They really bent over backwards to make the whole setting look really alive and immersive so it really pulls the audience in.”
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| PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie [©2026 Paramount Pictures] |
“I would watch the show with my own kids and could see how engaged they were by these characters. What I love about PAW Patrol is that it’s a really non-cynical, heartfelt family property. In the movies, we try to offer some kind of takeaway for the kids that also resonates with adults.” — Writer-director Cal Brunker
Learning to Roar
One of the big scene-stealers of the third movie is a very cute, pink dinosaur named Rhubarb. “He is certainly a favorite character of mine,” says Brunker. “We wanted to explore what would happen if a puppy got a puppy! So, in this case, it’s the team’s Marshall meeting this new baby T. rex, who is very playful — but he hasn’t found his roar yet. So, that’s a bit of his journey as the pups try and teach him how to road. I won’t give away too much, but Rhubarb is a ton of fun, and he and Marshall have a very heartfelt relationship.”
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| Cal Brunker |
The design of the film’s giant Jurassic beasts was another one of the film’s notable challenges. “As someone who has always loved dinosaurs and grew up loving Jurassic Park, I knew we needed to make dinosaurs that fit in the world of the pups, but I also wanted them to be majestic. We needed to keep that sense of wonder for kids, so they couldn’t look goofy and cartoony. Rhubarb, the baby pink dinosaur, is fun and playful, but the bigger ones are not expressive with their faces in a cartoony way. They needed to be grounded and believable so that we could hang on to that sense of awe and wonder that you get from dinosaurs.”
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| PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie [©2026 Paramount Pictures] |
Art director Pierre-Antoine Moelo, who also worked as a visdev artist on the first feature, says one thing that sets the dinosaurs in this feature apart from other similarly themed movies is their color. “The dinosaurs in Jurassic Park are mostly gray and a bit more muted in terms of colors and tint,” he points out. “One of my main focuses on this movie was to find interesting colors for them. They could be bright and colorful, but not too much because we didn’t want them to overtake the main characters. We have about 10 different species, but each one had two or three variances and different colors which helped us populate the island. In terms of design, we had to include enough details and complexity for their skin pores and scales to create believability because they are huge characters and take a lot of space on the screen.”
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| PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie [©2026 Paramount Pictures] |
Brunker points out that the basic pipeline used at the studio was Maya-based. “We used that in combination of other software that helped us do all kinds of cool things like scattering the moss and flowers on the jungle floor,” says the director. “We were able to things in The Dino Movie that we couldn’t have done on the previous two. Not only is it the advancements in technology, it’s also the ability of the crew. Our core theme has been together through multiple movies, so we’re getting better and able to move more efficiently and getting more of those dollars on the screen instead of bumping heads. We’re all pulling in the same direction.”
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| PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie [©2026 Paramount Pictures] |
The Parent Trap
When the conversation turned to the enduring appeal of the brand’s tail-wagging stars, Brunker mentioned that he used to watch the show with his own kids who were two and five at the time when he began working on this movie. “I could see how engaged they were by these characters,” he recalled. “I understood from watching it with them how to approach them. What I love about PAW Patrol is that it’s a really non-cynical, heartfelt family property. In the movies, we try to offer some kind of takeaway for the kids that also resonates with adults. The third movie is about the power of perseverance. We have Marshall, the clumsy pup who never gives up. I tell my own kids too that they have to learn to try stuff, and when they get things wrong, they have to keep going.”
Brunker says some of his favorite feedbacks from the movies came from parents who went to the theater expecting it to be a kiddie movie and that they’d be checking their phones all the time. “But then, they actually got swept up in the story,” he says. “And they’re like, ‘Wait! Why am I emotionally moved by this?’ That means we’ve done our job!”
PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie is currently playing in theaters nationwide.
PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie is in theaters today!
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