Is Trolls Band Together about to reunite one of the greatest boy bands of all time?
After the trailer for the upcoming animated film — the third installment in DreamWorks’ Trolls franchise — hinted at a boy band reunion storyline for Justin Timberlake’s character, Branch, a source exclusively tells ET, “JC Chasez, Lance Bass, Joey Fatone and Chris Kirkpatrick are expected to have surprise roles in the third Trolls film, Trolls Band Together, with Justin Timberlake.”
The source added that the quintet will also reunite as *NSYNC to release a new song for the movie — their first song together since 2001’s “Girlfriend.”
ET has reached out to Universal, but the studio has not confirmed this news and is not commenting.
The Trolls Band Together trailer does seem to tease the connection between Branch’s character and Timberlake’s real-life boy band past, revealing that Branch and his four brothers — played by Troye Sivan, Kid Cudi, Daveed Diggs and Eric André — were once in a group together called BroZone.
When one brother, Floyd (Sivan), is kidnapped, John Dory (André) tracks Branch down to reunite the group and save their brother.
“Branch, we’re out of sync,” Floyd tells his brother in a flashback included in the trailer, making more hints at the boy band connections. “We’ve gone from boys to men, and now there’s only one direction for us to go: to the back streets.”
While fans have been asking about an *NSYNC reunion for years now, and the group members have assembled in different combinations for some special events — most recently to perform “Bye Bye Bye” at Ryan Cabrera’s wedding to Alexa Bliss — this would mark the first time that Timberlake has performed with the other four members since their 2002 split.
When ET spoke to Fatone after the group — sans Timberlake — reunited to join Ariana Grande onstage at Coachella in 2019, he admitted it made him nostalgic for touring days and said “never say never” when it comes to getting the group fully back together.
“We were excited, but it was Ariana’s show,” Fatone recalled. “So we were just like, ‘Hey, we’re coming in, having a great time.’ And that’s what we did. We had a blast doing it ’cause it was, like, two songs, let’s have fun, no stress on us.”