Pixar’s Inside Out is scheduled for release June 19, 2015. This is the first time in more than a decade that Pixar has skipped a yearly release cycle.
The upcoming film is shrouded in mystery, as little is known besides a simple summary and the voice cast (no trailers available at this time).
It’s the story of eleven-year-old Riley, a girl in the Midwest that’s moving to San Francisco. It’s about her transition in a wave of new life experiences. It’s the new beginnings that Riley encounters that spur some inner growth, turmoil, and comedy. Pixar’s press release:
Like all of us, Riley is guided by her emotions.… The emotions live in Headquarters, the control center inside Riley’s mind, where they help advise her through everyday life.
In a standard Pixar fashion, Inside Out is an attempt to try something unusual in film; storytelling that’s not been attempted in mainstream family film fare. Emotions are played as characters. The voice talents are Amy Poehler as Joy, Bill Hader as Fear, Lewis Black as Anger, and Mindy Kaling as Disgust.
The film is set for release exactly one year from now, on June 19, 2015. Producer Jonas Rivera quipped that such a seemingly long lead is “dog years” in animation time, where projects typically move at a glacial pace for years on end. When he and Docter finished the long and rewarding journey of Oscar-winning 2009 effort “Up,” they wanted to keep pushing the limits of the medium and presenting fresh and exciting new narrative and aesthetic choices. “But if you do something two different and too new,” Docter warned, “you risk pulling the audience out of the thing. If the story has no relationship to them or the world we live in, people don’t engage at all. The puzzler was, ‘How can we take audiences to somewhere they can relate to but had never been before?’”
Director Pete Docter is one of my favorites, so I’m happy to see that Pixar is taking extra time to get the film right. I can live without a Pixar film this year if it means Inside Out is the better for it.
Inside Out is the second Pixar film with a female lead, the first being Brave, which was anything but. As recent Pixar films have shown us, their creative team isn’t perfect. That said, I have faith that it’s the likes of Up directors/storytellers that still have talent and good films in them yet, so Inside out is in good hands.
(Via HitFix)