Pixar announced today that it will move forward with its Day of the Dead film project, now called Coco.
Coco will be directed by Lee Unkrich (Toy Story 3). Unkrich’s project will answer the question, What if a Mexican boy named Miguel could meet his long-dead Mexican family members? It was described by Pixar chief creative officer John Lasseter at the D23 Expo as “breathtaking, beautiful, and fun.”
If Unkrich, a white Jewish gentleman from Cleveland, Ohio, sounds like an odd choice for directing a film rooted in a centuries-old Mexican tradition, fear not. Unkrich explained today that he has traveled several times to Mexico to study real Mexicans doing real Mexican types of things. Plus, he’s surely seen the illustrations of Posada, so he’s at least as qualified as any other white person who wants to appropriate Mexican culture for the purpose of boosting an American corporation’s bottomline.