Birthdate: Nov 18, 1978
Birthplace: Fargo, North Dakota
Daniel Chong (birthname: Daniel William Chong) is a veteran story artist for Disney Animation Studio/Pixar who has expanded into directing, writing and producing, launching his career at Disney/Pixar as a story artist for the animated movies Bolt (2008), Cars 2 (2011), Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax (2012), Free Birds (2013) and Inside Out (2015). Chong left Disney/Pixar, making his directorial debut as co-writer/executive producer/story artist of the animated feature version of the hit TV series We Bare Bears: The Movie (2020), released by Warner Bros. Television Distribution.
Chong returned to Disney/Pixar and served as a member of the Pixar Senior Creative Team for Turning Red (2022), Lightyear (2022), Elemental (2023), Inside Out 2 (2024) and Elio (2025), even as he spent six years directing and co-writing (with screenwriter Jesse Andrews) his first theatrical release, the original animated feature, Hoppers (2026), starring the voices of Piper Curda, Bobby Moynihan, Jon Hamm, Kathy Najimy, Dave Franco, Isaiah Whitlock Jr., Meryl Streep and Vanessa Bayer, and which was released wide by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.
Daniel Chong was born and raised in Fargo, North Dakota, by his parents, who are of Singaporean and Chinese heritage and who immigrated to the U.S. in the 1970s. Chong studied animation and graduated from the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California.
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Tonal Interest: Daniel Chong has commented that “the movies I love (are) kind of hard to pinpoint when it vacillates between scary, fun, weird, but also kind of dramatic…that’s always attracted me.”
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