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Soul Trailer #1 (2020)

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Pixar sends its next Oscar contender straight into the afterlife — and back out again.

Disney and Pixar dropped the first full trailer for “Soul” on March 12, 2020, and it immediately reframes what audiences thought they knew about the studio’s next big swing. This isn’t a straight trip to the hereafter — it’s a detour through a cosmic waystation where souls are built before they’re born, and the whole plot hinges on a middle-school band teacher who isn’t ready to die yet.

• Directed by two-time Oscar winner Pete Docter (“Up,” “Inside Out”) and co-directed by Kemp Powers (“One Night in Miami”), with Dana Murray producing; “Soul” is set for U.S. theaters on June 19, 2020.
• Jamie Foxx voices Joe Gardner, a New York band teacher who lands his dream shot at a jazz club, falls down an open manhole, and ends up separated from his body before that night’s gig.
• Tina Fey voices 22, a stubborn, millennia-old unborn soul who wants nothing to do with Earth; Joe gets mistaken for a soul counselor and has to convince her life is worth living to earn her Earth Pass.

The Setup: A Manhole, Not a Hospital Bed

The trailer’s inciting incident is almost comically mundane for a film about the metaphysics of existence: Joe Gardner finally gets his break — a real piano slot at a premier jazz club — and moments later walks straight into an open manhole. That fall knocks his soul loose from his body, and instead of drifting toward the Great Beyond, he tumbles into “The Great Before,” also called the You Seminar, where new souls are assembled before they ever touch down on Earth.

It’s a sharper, weirder premise than a simple near-death story, and it’s the kind of high-concept swing Pete Docter has built a career on. His resume already includes “Up,” about a widower tying his house to balloons, and “Inside Out,” which staged an entire movie inside a 12-year-old’s head. “Soul” pushes that same instinct toward the biggest question Pixar has tackled yet: what actually makes a life worth living.

Joe and 22: An Odd-Couple Bet on Living

Once inside the You Seminar, Joe is mistaken for a mentor and paired with 22, voiced by Tina Fey — a cynical, unborn soul who has spent an untold stretch of eternity dodging Earth altogether because she’s never found a reason to want it. Joe, desperate to get back to his body before his club performance, strikes a deal: help 22 find her spark, and he gets his shot at getting home.

22 has spent millennia avoiding Earth, convinced there’s nothing down there worth the trip.

That mismatch — a man who’s spent his whole life chasing one specific passion, paired with a soul who thinks passion itself might be pointless — is where the trailer draws its tension and its comedy. Fey and Foxx trade the kind of clashing energy that powered Docter’s earlier pairings, except this time the stakes are existential rather than domestic.

The Voice Cast and the Sound of the Film

Beyond Foxx and Fey, the cast includes Phylicia Rashad, Angela Bassett, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, and Daveed Diggs. Musically, “Soul” is doing something Pixar hasn’t attempted before: pairing original jazz compositions written by Jon Batiste with an ambient score from Oscar winners Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, giving the film two distinct sonic identities — one for Joe’s grounded, physical New York, and one for the otherworldly Great Before.

Foxx’s involvement here lands during a stretch where he’s been busy across genres — he’s also fronting the action thriller “Project Power” alongside Joseph Gordon-Levitt — but “Soul” marks his first lead voice role for Pixar and puts a jazz pianist’s hands, quite literally, at the center of an animated feature for the first time in the studio’s history.

Soul Joins the 2020 Slate

A June 19, 2020 release puts “Soul” in the thick of Disney’s summer calendar, right alongside the rest of the studio’s plans for the year. With several tentpoles across the industry still sorting out dates amid an increasingly uncertain release environment, “Soul” is one of the handful of major 2020 titles still holding a firm date as of this trailer’s debut.

Pixar’s last two original outings, “Coco” and “Onward,” leaned on family and adventure to make their emotional case. “Soul” is aiming somewhere heavier — mortality, purpose, the difference between a passion and an obsession — and doing it through a band teacher who’s really just trying to make one gig on time.