Death is Pixar’s next adven­ture in the Soul trailer

Pixar’s quite near­ly done it all. They mas­tered land, so they took to the sea, and once they’d con­quered the sea, they took to space, and once they’d tri­umphed in space, they took to the inte­ri­ors of the human mind. Where could pos­si­bly be left for the ani­ma­tion pow­er­house to plant their flag? Where – but death?

That’s the over­all gist of the trail­er for Soul, Pixar’s sec­ond fea­ture slat­ed for next year after the mag­ic-pants thriller Onward. The film, which will osten­si­bly be a good time for the whole fam­i­ly, revolves around one Joe Gard­ner (voiced by Jamie Foxx), who dies after walk­ing into an open manhole.

While most of the trail­er dis­plays the human Joe going about his day in a pic­turesque New York neigh­bor­hood, dream­ing of the day he’ll play jazz onstage to ador­ing sold-out crowds, it seems that the actu­al sto­ry pre­dom­i­nant­ly takes place in the after­life. A pro­vid­ed plot syn­op­sis makes men­tion of a ​“You Sem­i­nar,” a stopover dur­ing which a soul bet­ters itself before assum­ing the ves­sel of a new­born infant.

What is undoubt­ed­ly Pixar’s high­est-con­cept project to date fea­tures vocal per­for­mances from Tina Fey (as a fel­low way­ward soul), Dav­eed Dig­gs (as Joe’s area rival), Quest­love (as Joe’s friend and trusty drum­mer), and Phyli­cia Rashad (as Joe’s moth­er). Pixar has already tout­ed the wel­come diver­si­ty this cast and sto­ry will add to what has hereto­fore been an over­whelm­ing­ly white ros­ter, but whether they stick the land­ing has yet to be seen.

What’s clear is that there’s a lot this trail­er isn’t show­ing us, the full scope of its cos­mic vision still to be revealed. Sounds like the meta­phys­i­cal ambi­tion of direc­tor Pete Doc­ter will make Inside Out look like Herman’s Head.

Soul comes to cin­e­mas in the UK and US on 19 June, 2020.