B.O.O.: Bureau of Otherworldly Operations (partially found unreleased DreamWorks Animation film; 2015)

The logo for the film.

Status: Partially Found

B.O.O.: Bureau of Otherworldly Operations is the title of an American CGI action comedy film made by DreamWorks Animation and directed by Tony Leondis (best known for directing the films Igor and The Emoji Movie). According to an official description on a piece of merchandise for the film, the film would have followed ghosts Jackson Moss and Watts, who both join the titular Bureau of Otherworldly Operations, which is an organization dedicated to protecting living humans from hauntings by evil ghosts. While working in the B.O.O., the two uncover a plot from the agency's "Most Wanted Haunter" that plans to destroy the organization with his ghost army. The two must work together and face off against the haunter's army in order to save all of ghostkind and humankind.^[1]

While the film was initially set to be released in June 2015, DreamWorks decided to move the release date seven months back to November 2014 in order to avoid competition with Pixar's Inside Out, before ultimately removing it from the release schedule entirely in order to find a different release date.^[2] While the film was speculated to have been pushed back to a 2016 release date, it was ultimately never added back into Dreamworks' release schedule. While there has been no official announcement on the status of the film, the lack of information on it since 2015 (along with DreamWorks removing the official website for it in late 2019) strongly indicates that the film was unofficially cancelled and will almost certainly never see the light of day.

Avaliable Footage

On January 29th, 2019, former animation supervisor Alexis Wanneroy uploaded an animation reel on his Vimeo account that showed footage of B.O.O.: Bureau of Otherworldly Operations and another cancelled DreamWorks film titled Larrikins. A few weeks later, on February 9th of that same year, Wanneroy uploaded a pre-production reel that showed more animation from both cancelled movies. In June of the same year, Twitter user Art of Lost and Cancelled Media uploaded a compilation video of clips taken from the two reels that showed footage from both movies.^[3] On November 2, 2022, Wanneroy uploaded an animation reel from 2017 that also showed footage from this film, with the only notable footage being a small clip (already shown in the other reels) that had a final render. Wanneroy's combined animation reels contain 46 seconds of footage from B.O.O., with around 24 seconds of that footage appearing to be from final renders.

In September 2022, animator Sebastien Wojda uploaded an animation reel that was originally made in 2019. The reel included clips from various cancelled DreamWorks projects, including B.O.O.: Bureau of Otherworldly Operations, Larrikins, and Me and My Shadow. The reel contains exactly one minute of animation clips from B.O.O., none of which are final renders. In November of that same year, animator Nayoun Kim uploaded an animation reel created in 2016 that showed several clips of B.O.O.. The clips in this animation reel total 19 seconds and (like Wojda's reel) are not final renders.

Despite more footage and production material from B.O.O.: Bureau of Otherworldly Operations finding its way online over the years, as of 2022, the total amount of footage found for this film is just over 2 minutes long, and only 24 seconds of that footage is shown to have final renders, which is clearly far from all the material made for the film. While B.O.O.: Bureau of Otherworldly Operations appears to have been cancelled fairly late in development (as indicated by multiple shots having final or near-final renders, along with the apparent production of merchandise for the film), it is unclear just how much of the film was complete before its cancellation.