Next summer, Joe Gardner will discover his brilliant, passionate self in Pixar’s newest film, Soul.

The film is directed by two time Academy Award winner Pete Docter, director of Inside Out and Monster’s Inc, and co-directed by Kemp Powers, who has written episodes for Star Trek: Discovery. The idea for the film, according to Docter, has been in the making for 23 years, the day his son was born. Docter had always thought that your personality was something that developed as one grew older, but the day his son was born, he already had his personality.

Soul is the story of Joe Gardner, voiced by Jamie Foxx (Django Unchained), a middle-school band teacher with a love for playing jazz, and whose dream to play in front of an audience is finally coming true after impressing several jazz musicians during an opening act at New York’s Half Note Club. However, Joe is involved in an unfortunate accident causes Joe’s soul to be seperated from his body, and he finds himself at the “You Seminar”, a center in which souls develop and gain passions before being transported to a newborn child, and Gardner must work with souls in training, such as 22, voiced by Tina Fey (30 Rock), a soul with a dim view on life after being trapped for years at the You Seminar, in order to return to Earth before its too late.

In addition to Foxx and Fey, the voice cast also includes rapper Questlove as Curly, a drummer in Joe’s band, Phylicia Rashaad (The Cosby Show) as Joe’s mother, and Daveed Diggs (Ferdinand) as Paul, Joe’s neighborhood nemesis.

Soul has been described by the filmmakers as an exploration on where your focus should 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’?

Expect to see the full trailer sometime in 2020, and with this being a Pixar film, expect lots of laughters, some tears to be shed, and leaving the theater smiling.

Also expect an amazing soundtrack. composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross are composing the films score, and musician Jon Batise will be writing the jazz songs featured in the film.

Soul is set to be released June 19, 2020.

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