Disney and Pixar’s Soul Movie Release Date Pushed Back

Disney-Pixar’s Soul has been pushed from its June 19 release date and will now open November 20, 2020, Disney announced Monday. Directed by Academy Award winner Pete Docter (Monsters, Inc, Up, Inside Out), co-directed by first-time Pixar director Kemp Powers and produced by Academy Award-nominated producer Dana Murray (Pixar short Lou), Soul tells the story of Joe Gardner (voice of Jamie Foxx), a middle school band teacher who lost his passion for jazz. When he’s transported into another realm, where he’ll help infant soul 22 (voice of Tina Fey) discover her own passions, he’ll discover what it truly means to have soul.

Soul is the latest film to be delayed amid the coronavirus crisis. Disney most recently pushed back Marvel Studios’ Black Widow from its May 1 release to Nov. 6, taking the original release date of The Eternals, now opening Feb. 12, 2021. Searchlight release The Personal History of David Copperfield and 20th Century Studios release The Woman in the Window were pulled from Disney’s slate before the live-action Jungle Cruise, starring Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt, was moved off its July 24 release to July 30, 2021. Disney’s live-action Mulan is set to open July 24 after moving from its March 27 date.

Soul is “an exploration of, where should your focus be? What are the things that, at the end of the day, are really going to be the important things that you look back on and go, ‘I spent a worthy amount of my limited time on Earth worrying or focused on that’?” Docter, director and Pixar chief creative officer, previously told Entertainment Weekly of his first film since 2015’s Inside Out.

“I’ve been doing animation for 30 years,” Docter said. “I love it, I can’t get enough of it, and then I also recognize this is not the end-all, be-all of everything. There are children and life experiences and food and all these other things in the world that you can’t say are less important than animation. I would maybe have said that at certain times in my life.”

Starring Jamie Foxx (The Amazing Spider-Man 2), Tina Fey (30 Rock), Daveed Diggs (The Little Mermaid), Phylicia Rashad (Creed), Quest Love (The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon) and Angela Bassett (Black Panther), Soul opens November 20.