Pixar Launches Second Trailer For Pete Docter’s ‘Soul’
The second trailer for Pixar’s second feature of the year is here. Soul marks the directorial return of Pete Docter, the studio’s new-ish chief creative officer, following classics like Up, Inside Out, and Monsters, Inc.
Watch the trailer and read the official synopsis below:
Joe Gardner is a middle-school band teacher who gets the chance of a lifetime to play at the best jazz club in town. But one small misstep takes him from the streets of New York City to The Great Before — a fantastical place where new souls get their personalities, quirks, and interests before they go to Earth. Determined to return to his life, Joe teams up with a precocious soul, 22, who has never understood the appeal of the human experience. As Joe desperately tries to show 22 what’s great about living, he may just discover the answers to some of life’s most important questions.
The film’s first trailer, which debuted in November, introduced us to Joe (Jamie Foxx) and teased the The Great Before. The second trailer fleshes out that nether world, introducing some bold expressionistic design and startling deviations into 2d-style linework.
These passages recall the graphic playfulness of Inside Out, particularly a scene that riffs on different movements in modern art history. More generally, Soul resembles that film’s inward-looking existential tone and narrative approach, which renders human personalities as abstract sprites.
The trailer comes hot on the heels of Onward, Pixar’s first feature of 2020, which came out in theaters last week. Dan Scanlon’s intimate family adventure was released to warm reviews and mediocre box-office takings (by Pixar’s standards). When inflation is factored in, its $39.1-million domestic opening marked a new low for the studio.
Soul is co-directed by Kemp Powers, an established playwright, who wrote the screenplay with Docter and Mike Jones. The producer is Dana Murray, who was Oscar-nominated for the studio’s 2017 short Lou.
The cast also includes Tina Fey, Phylicia Rashad, Angela Bassett, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, and Daveed Diggs. Renowned musician and bandleader Jon Batiste is writing jazz music for the film, and Nine Inch Nails’s Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross are composing the score.
The film will be released on June 19, 2020.
