Joe Gardner, a middle school music teacher, has long dreamed of performing jazz music onstage, and finally gets a chance after impressing other jazz musicians during an opening act at the Half Note Club. However, an untimely accident causes Gardner’s soul to be separated from his body and begin to proceed to The Great Beyond, and Gardner escapes to The Great Before, a world where souls develop personalities, quirks, and traits before being sent off to Earth. There, Gardner must work with souls in training at The Great Before, such as 22, a soul with a dim view on the concept of life, in order to return to Earth before his body dies.
Cast
Jamie Foxx as Joe Gardner, a passionate music teacher whose soul gets separated from his body after an accident.
Tina Fey as 22, a soul trapped in The Great Before with a dim view of life.
In January 2016, it was announced that Pete Docter, head of Pixar, was working on a new film. In June 2018, it was announced that Docter was planning to complete his film despite being appointed Chief Creative Officer at Pixar after John Lasseter's departure. In June 2019, Pixar announced a new film titled Soul with Docter directing and Dana Murray producing, with a synopsis released on Twitter about a cosmic journey through New York City. Murray said that the film will " to a world where no one’s ever been, well, for a long time", while co-writer/co-director Kemp Powers said that it is "completely different" to Docter's previous films. Powers also said that the film will answer important questions in "a really fun way". Tina Fey also contributed to the screenplay, having helped to write her character's lines. Pixar chose to portray the film's main character as a musician, because they wanted a "profession the audience could root for", and settled for a musician after trying for a scientist, which " so naturally pure as a musician's life". Docter described Soul as "an exploration of, where should your focus be? What are the things that, at the end of the day, are really going to be the important things that you look back on and go, 'I spent a worthy amount of my limited time on Earth worrying or focused on that'?".
Casting
On August 24, 2019, Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, Questlove, Phylicia Rashad and Daveed Diggs were announced as starring in the film. Soul is Pixar's first film to feature an African-American protagonist. On March 17, 2020, Angela Bassett announced she was in the cast. On April 13, 2020, John Ratzenberger joined the voice cast. On May 4, 2020, Powers announced that Richard Ayoade joined the film's voice cast.
Animation
The filmmakers animated the souls featured in the film in a "vaporous", "ethereal", and "non physical" way, having based their designs on definitions about souls given to them by various religious and cultural representatives. Docter described it as "a huge challenge", as the animators are "used to toys, cars, things that are much more substantial and easily referenced", though he felt the animation team "really put some cool stuff together that's really indicative of those words but also relatable".
Soul was originally scheduled to be released in the United States on June 19, 2020, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was delayed to November 20, 2020. This slot replaced Disney Animation’s film Raya and the Last Dragon, whose release was delayed to March 12, 2021. On June 3, 2020, Soul was selected as part of the line-up for the 2020 Cannes Film Festival.
