Pixar's Soul Will Have a Documentary About Film's Completion During Quarantine

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit earlier this year, its impact was almost immediately felt in the [...]

By Nicole Drum

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit earlier this year, its impact was almost immediately felt in the entertainment industry. Production on various film and television projects ground to a halt as stay at home and lockdown orders went into place to attempt to stem the spread of the disease. For many projects that's meant long delays in filming and, in turn, delays getting released, but for Pixar's Soul, the shutdowns created a whole new challenge: how do you complete an animated film amidst a pandemic? It's that question that will be answered in a documentary about the making of the upcoming film, according to Soul's filmmakers.

During a recent virtual press conference for Soul, co-director and writer Kemp Powers revealed that a documentary about finishing Soul was created and will be released at some point in the future.

"We ended up actually creating a documentary about the process of finishing Soul remotely that'll come out at some future date," he said.

Soul's producer Dana Murray explained that Soul had just seven weeks of production left when lock down began and acknowledged that they were very fortunate orders came down when they did, allowing people to take their work home with them to keep going with very little downtime.

"I guess we were really lucky and blessed of where we were at in production because the back-end is highly technical," Murray said. "So, people were able to literally grab their machines and go home with them, and we were up and running in a day or two. "Our systems team is incredible. Everyone was just really resilient."

While the circumstances around how Soul was completed are unprecedented, the idea of a behind-the-scenes documentary of sorts is not. Into the Unknown: Making Frozen 2, a docuseries about the making of Frozen 2, debuted on Disney+ back in June. And Disney+ would be an excellent home for a Soul documentary as well. It was recently announced that the film will now be released on Christmas Day -- Friday, December 25th -- on the platform as opposed to in theaters.

You can check out the official synopsis for Soul below.

Soul follows Joe Gardner (Jamie Foxx), a middle-school band teacher who gets the chance of a lifetime to play at the best jazz club in town. But one small misstep takes him from the streets of New York City to The Great Before – a fantastical place where new souls get their personalities, quirks, and interests before they go to Earth. Determined to return to his life, Joe teams up with a precocious soul, 22 (Tina Fey), who has never understood the appeal of the human experience. As Joe desperately tries to show 22 what's great about living, he may just discover the answers to some of life's most important questions.

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