Pixar Animation Studios has broken their silence about 2015’s Inside Out and has released a synopsis for the featured film, which travels inside the mind of a young girl.
Up director Pete Docter presented the audience with an extended look at the film yesterday at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival. The film was inspired by his personal life and the growth of his young daughter; it will start out with a montage of a young girl named Riley Anderson in her early years.
“It’s based on a strong emotional experience I had watching my daughter grow up,” says the Up director, who noticed that when his daughter Elie turned 12, much of her childhood joy disappeared, and she became more moody and withdrawn. “There is something that is lost when you grow up” — and the film became a way to explore that change on an emotional level.
Although the film follows Riley as she moves into a new home, Docter notes that she “is not our main character; she is our setting.” It will, however, focus on five emotions that are competing for control of Riley’s mind– Fear, Anger, Joy, Disgust, and Sadness. Docter has dubbed them “our version of Walt Disney’s Seven Dwarfs.”
The film’s synopsis from Pixar’s official website:
From the tepuis of South America to a monster-filled metropolis, Academy Award®-winning director Pete Docter has taken audiences to unique and imaginative places. In 2015, he will take us to the most extraordinary location of all – inside the mind of an 11-year-old named Riley.
Growing up can be a bumpy road, and it’s no exception for Riley, who is uprooted from her Midwest life when her father starts a new job in San Francisco. Like all of us, Riley is guided by her emotions – Joy (Amy Poehler), Fear (Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black), Disgust (Mindy Kaling) and Sadness (Phyllis Smith). The emotions live in Headquarters, the control center inside Riley’s mind, where they help advise her through everyday life. As Riley and her emotions struggle to adjust to a new life in San Francisco, turmoil ensues in Headquarters. Although Joy, Riley’s main and most important emotion, tries to keep things positive, the emotions conflict on how best to navigate a new city, house and school.
Variety was present at the festival and illustrates some details about the upcoming animation.
“While Fear, Disgust and Anger awkwardly try to keep things under control — as illustrated in a second clip set around the family dinner table which Pixar unveiled at CinemaCon in March — Joy and Sadness put aside their differences and take audiences through a tour of Riley’s thinking process. This epic road trip entails crossing such areas as Imagination Land (“a giant amusement park full of everything Riley has ever daydreamed about”), a movie studio where nightmares are made, the Train of Thought (a free-ranging locomotive that can go zooming off in any direction) and Abstract Thought — the zone Docter had the most fun translating to the screen.”
“One family came and watched the movie,” the director recalls to Variety. “The son had always had trouble going off the diving board, and that day, he dove off, and he said, ‘I just felt like Fear was driving, and I needed to make him step aside.’”
Pixar President Ed Catmull believes that the film has the potential to become the next Up.
Inside Out will be released in theaters June 19th, 2015. Pixar will later release The Good Dinosaur on November 25th that same year.
