Jamie Foxx and Pixar are here to remind us that “life is full of possibilities. You just have to know where to look.”
“Life is full of possibilities,” Jamie Foxx‘s Joe Gardner says in the latest Soul trailer from Pixar. “You just have to know where to look.” It’s definitely the kind of message people could use right about now.
This new preview for the animated cosmic adventure from Inside Out director Pete Docter and One Night in Miami writer Kemp Powers leans into the uplifting nature of Soul. Like the film’s main character, the trailer is able to find music in everything.
Foxx’s Joe is a middle-school music teacher from Queens who finally gets his big break, playing piano for a noted jazz quartet. In his excitement, he takes a tragic spill and his soul finds itself heading towards The Great Beyond where all souls go when they die. He attempts to flee and takes yet another tumble that lands him at the You Seminar, a place in the cosmos where new souls are given their personalities and interests before joining human bodies on earth.
According to Docter, who co-directed and co-wrote Soul with Powers, the basic premise for the story is, “a soul who doesn’t want to go live meets a soul who doesn’t want to die.” The former is 22, voiced by Tina Fey. She’s never lived on earth and finds the concept of human life soul crushing (pun intended). In the hopes of returning to his life, Joe must help 22 find her spark to earn a place on earth.
Disney/Pixar
“We’ve been working on Soul for years, but the film feels timelier now than we ever could have imagined back when we began,” Powers says. “In a year where everything we know has been turned upside down, we’ve all been forced to find new meaning both in the relationships we have and the small moments that truly make life worth living.”
Phylicia Rashad, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, Daveed Diggs, and Angela Bassett were announced for the cast early on. Newly revealed additions include Graham Norton as spiritual sign twirler Moonwind, Thor: Ragnarok‘s Rachel House as count-obsessed Terry, comedian Donnell Rawlings as Joe’s barber Dez, and June Squibb as Gerel.
Voicing the Counselors, who describe themselves as manifestations of the universe dumbing itself down so that feeble human minds can comprehend them, are The New Mutants‘ Alice Braga, The Mandalorian‘s Richard Ayoade, Woke‘s Wes Studi, Bless the Harts‘ Fortune Feimster, and The Affair‘s Zenobia Shroff.
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