The SpongeBob Movie: It’s a Wonderful Sponge Will Finally Give Us a SpongeBob Origin Story

SpongeBob Squarepants has certainly been through a lot since he first walked out of his orange pineapple under the sea in 1999. Yes, it was freaking 1999 when the series first debuted, if you can believe that. Since then, Spongebob has helmed some 237 episodes of TV, spread over 11 seasons, along with two feature films and a hit Broadway musical. Not a bad effort, for a sponge.

And yet, there’s one aspect of SpongeBob as a character that has never really been explored in depth: A SpongeBob origin story. And that’s apparently exactly what audiences will be getting in 2020 with the 20th anniversary release of the third movie in the franchise, The SpongeBob Movie: It’s a Wonderful Sponge. This information was dropped on us by none other than Mireille Soria, president of Paramount Animation, as she spoke at the VIEW Conference in Turin, Italy.

“For the first time ever, we’re going to the get to the origin of how little SpongeBob met the rest of the Bikini Bottom gang at summer camp,” said Soria. “The film’s opening will take place at Camp Coral, when all of our favorite characters meet for the first time.”

The all-CG film will sport some of the same hybrid animation sequences that characterized the previous film in the series, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, and will sport a score from Hans Zimmer. You can expect some major musical announcements in terms of guests stars, down the line.

For now, though, it’s fascinating to think that 20 years after the introduction of the character, we’ll finally be seeing the meeting stories of SpongeBob and Patrick, or Squidward, or every other beloved character in the SpongeBob Squarepants universe.

The SpongeBob Movie: It’s a Wonderful Sponge is slated for a July 17, 2020 release.