Dora And The Lost City Of Gold Behind The Scenes [updated] May 2026

“We didn’t want a grim, muddy jungle,” Tildesley explains. “Dora sees the jungle as a playground. So we pumped up the colors—emerald greens, bright golds, shocking red flowers.”

“I grew up watching her,” Merced revealed on set. “But I wanted to make sure she wasn’t just a cartoon. She’s a kid who has been homeschooled in the jungle by explorer parents. Of course she talks to a monkey and a backpack—that’s her reality.” dora and the lost city of gold behind the scenes

“We wanted Boots to feel like a real animal, not a cartoon sidekick,” says Bobin. “But for the dream sequences and a very special hallucination scene, we brought in a Jim Henson Company puppet. That puppet was so expressive, the actors started performing to it like a real co-star.” “We didn’t want a grim, muddy jungle,” Tildesley

“We mixed two tons of rolled oats, water, and green food coloring in a tank,” reveals special effects coordinator J.D. Schwalm. “It has the exact viscosity of quicksand—slow to sink in, but impossible to move quickly.” “But I wanted to make sure she wasn’t just a cartoon

“It was chaos,” laughs co-star Jeffrey Wahlberg (Diego). “Isabela would be giving this heroic speech, and then a mechanical flower would sneeze powder in her mouth. We had to do, like, forty takes because we kept breaking character.” One of the biggest behind-the-scenes questions was: How do you handle Boots? In the cartoon, Boots is a talking monkey. In a live-action film, a talking monkey felt... risky. The solution? Boots is a real, trained monkey for most of the film (a cheeky capuchin named Baby), but he doesn’t talk. Instead, Dora interprets his chattering.