Following in the Pixar tradition of “What if toys/bugs/cars/feelings had feelings?” the studio’s latest asks, “What if souls had feelings?”
Aptly titled Soul, the movie follows a middle school teacher and jazz musician named Joe Gardner (Jamie Foxx, starring as Pixar’s first black lead). After finally getting his big break at an audition gone wonderfully right he ends up ...dying. Well, his soul gets separated from his body and he ends up in a place dubbed the “You Seminar,” where souls get trained.
There he meets 22 (voiced by Tina Fey), a pessimistic soul trapped in the seminar. The trailer doesn’t show much of what this alternate dimension looks like — besides a black void of background — but we know it’s Pixar so we can expect some feels.
Soul also stars Questlove as a drummer in Joe’s band; Daveed Diggs as Paul, Joe’s neighborhood rival; and Phylicia Rashād as Joe’s mother.
It’s the second Pixar flick to hit theaters in 2020. Onward, a suburban fantasy tale of two elves bonding with their dead father’s disembodied legs (it makes sense in the trailer), comes out on March 6. Meanwhile, Soul will hit theaters on June 19.
