Benjamin Bratt and Gael García Bernal to lead the all-Hispanic voice cast for Pixar’s next original feature alongside newcomer Anthony Gonzalez and character actress Renée Victor.
Pixar’s forthcoming Dia de los Muertos-themed feature Coco was first announced back in 2012, but few details about the project -- the next original film to come from the studio -- have been released since then.
Set for release on November 22, 2017, Coco is being directed by Lee Unkrich (Toy Story 3) alongside writer and co-director Adrian Molina and producer Darla K. Anderson. And now, Entertainment Weekly is reporting that Benjamin Bratt and Gael García Bernal will lead the voice cast alongside newcomer Anthony Gonzalez, who will voice the film’s main character, a 12-year-old Mexican boy named Miguel. Character actress Renée Victor also joins the cast as Abuelita, Miguel’s grandmother.
Coco follows the secret musical ambitions of Miguel, who lives in a lively 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 underworld, Miguel encounters the souls of his own family -- generations’ worth of long-dead but no less vivacious Rivera ancestors, including great-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 spirit -- a trickster named Hector, 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.
“It was important to us from day one that we had an all-Latino cast,” Unkrich tells EW. “It focused us, and we ended up with a fantastic mix of people -- some from Mexico and some from Los Angeles.”
Head over to EW to read the full story.
Formerly Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network, Jennifer Wolfe has worked in the Media & Entertainment industry as a writer and PR professional since 2003.
