Coco (film)

Coco is a Disney/Pixar musical fantasy film centered around the Day of the Dead (Spanish: Día de los Muertos). Coco will be Pixar's 19th feature film, and was released on November 22, 2017.

Synopsis
Coco follows a 12-year old boy named Miguel who sets off a chain of events relating to a century-old mystery. The official story description is: "Coco is the celebration of a lifetime, where the discovery of a generations-old mystery leads to a most extraordinary and surprising family reunion."

Coco follows the secret musical ambitions of Miguel, who resides in a lively, loud Mexican village but comes from a family of shoemakers that may be the town's only music-hating household. For generations, the Riveras have banned music because they believe they've been cursed by it; as their family history goes, Miguel's great-great-grandfather abandoned his wife decades earlier to follow his own dreams of performing, leaving Imelda (Miguel's great-great-grandmother) to take control as the matriarch of the now-thriving Rivera line and declare music dead to the family forever.

But Miguel harbors a secret desire to seize his musical moment, inspired by his favorite singer of all time, the late Ernesto de la Cruz (Bratt). It's only after Miguel discovers an amazing link between himself and De la Cruz that he takes action to emulate the famous singer and, in doing so, accidentally enters the Land of the Dead.

In the beautiful underworld, it's not long until Miguel encounters the souls of his own family — generations' worth of long-dead but no less vivacious Rivera ancestors, including great-grandmother Imelda. Still, given the opportunity to roam around the Land of the Dead, Miguel decides to track down De la Cruz himself. He teams up with another friendly (and skeletal) spirit — a trickster named Héctor, voiced by Bernal — to find De la Cruz, earn his family's blessing to perform, and return to the Land of the Living before time runs out.

Cast

 * Anthony Gonzalez as Miguel Rivera
 * Gael García Bernal as Héctor
 * Benjamin Bratt as Ernesto de la Cruz
 * Renée Victor as Abuelita
 * Ana Ofelia Murguía as Mamá Coco
 * Alanna Ubach as Imelda
 * Jaime Camil as Papá
 * Sofía Espinosa as Mamá
 * Selene Luna as Tía Rosita
 * Alfonso Arau as Papá Julio
 * Edward James Olmos as Chicharrón
 * Roberto Donati as Papá Franco
 * Carla Medina as Tía Gloria
 * Luis Valdez as Tío Berto
 * Herbert Siguenza as Tío Oscar and Tío Felipe
 * Polo Rojas as Abel Rivera
 * Montse Hernandez as Rosa Rivera
 * Lombardo Boyar as Mariachi
 * Octavio Solís as Arrival Agent
 * Gabriel Iglesias as Head Clerk
 * Cheech Marin as Corrections Officer
 * Blanca Araceli as Emcee
 * John Ratzenberger as Juan Ortodoncia

Official Announcement
Disney/Pixar announced Lee Unkrich's next film at CinemaCon on April 24, 2012. At the time, it was referred to as The Untitled Pixar Movie About Día de los Muertos. The official synopsis is: "From director Lee Unkrich and producer Darla K. Anderson, the filmmaking team behind the Academy Award®-winning Toy Story 3, comes a wholly original Pixar Animation Studios film that delves into the vibrant holiday of Día de los Muertos."

- Official Announcement

Release
Coco was confirmed to be released on November 22, 2017. Pixar's very first movie, Toy Story, was released in 1995 that same day. It will premiere exclusively in Mexico on October 27, 2017 at the Morelia International Film Festival, right before its North American release.

The film was accompanied by Walt Disney Animation Studios featurette short Olaf's Frozen Adventure.

Development
On May 11, 2013, The Walt Disney Company requested a trademark the phrase "Dia de los Muertos" for various merchandise. This caused criticism from the Latino community.

The team made a trip to Mexico to find many references to help defining the characters and the story. Unkrich said, "I'd seen it portrayed in folk art. It was something about the juxtaposition of skeletons with bright, festive colors that captured my imagination. It has led me down a winding path of discovery. And the more I learn about Día de los Muertos, the more it affects me deeply."

In 2015, Disney hired Lalo Alcaraz as a consultant for the film. He is a Mexican-American cartoonist who drew a satire film poster depicting a skeletal gigantic Mickey Mouse with a line "It's coming to trademark your culture."

On April 13, 2016, Disney and Pixar announced that they started the animation process.

Trivia

 * This is Lee Unkrich's second Pixar feature film as a director, the first was Toy Story 3. However, this is Lee Unkrich's first feature for an original property.
 * From all of Disney's animation branches, this is their last original feature film of the 2010s, as the next films in the decade are all sequels.
 * The is Pixar's second film to focus mostly on cast members with a specific nationality, the first one was Brave which focused on actors with a Scottish nationality while Coco emphasizes on actors with a Mexican nationality.
 * Coco is the second Pixar film to have a release date on November 22, after Toy Story.
 * Thus, it is also be the second Pixar film to be theatrically accompanied by a non-Pixar short after Toy Story (which was theatrically accompanied by a reissue of 1990's Roger Rabbit short Roller Coaster Rabbit in 1995).
 * The sixth Pixar film to be scored by Michael Giacchino, after The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Up, Cars 2 and Inside Out.
 * This is the first Pixar full-length film to be a musical.
 * Overall, this is also Disney's second musical film to be released in 2017 within the same year after the live-action musical adaptation of Beauty and the Beast.
 * In Brazil, the title name was changed to "Viva", because the original title "Coco" could easily be mistaken for the Portuguese word "cocô", which translates to a curse word.