A "Love Letter to Mexico:" Pixar's COCO Cast and Plot Reveal

As promised yesterday night by director Lee Unkrich via Twitter, Entertainment Weekly and Vanity Fair have revealed our first cast and plot details on Pixar's November 22nd, 2017 release of Coco. Check out the primary cast of characters, initial plot details, interview with Director Lee Unkrich, and new piece of concept art for Pixar's Coco all after the break!

Entertainment Weekly- Pixar’s Coco Reveals Cast, Plot Details:

The world of Pixar is expanding in a big, dead, musical way in November 2017.
Coco is Pixar’s next original movie, and it’s the sole novel film for the studio over the next few years as production ramps up for Cars 3 (due in June 2017) and, later, The Incredibles 2 and Toy Story 4.

Since Coco’s announcement in 2012, little has been known about the film other than its central themes — it takes place in Mexico on the annual holiday Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead — and its filmmakers: Toy Story 3 director Lee Unkrich and producer Darla K. Anderson, and co-director Adrian Molina). But here’s the Coco content you’ve been waiting for: EW took a recent trip to Pixar and can now reveal a few additional details about the music-packed-but-not-quite-“musical” film.

First, the voice cast: Benjamin Bratt and Gael García Bernal will lead Coco alongside newcomer Anthony Gonzalez, who will voice the film’s main character, a 12-year-old Mexican boy named Miguel. Gonzalez was hired after serving as Miguel’s scratch voice during early development, proving himself indispensable to both the filmmakers and the character. Character actress Renée Victor also joins the cast as Abuelita, Miguel’s grandmother.

However, to understand whom Bratt and Bernal are voicing, it helps to get a little context. What’s Coco even about?

Coco follows the secret musical ambitions of Miguel, who resides in a lively, loud 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-grandfather abandoned his wife decades earlier to follow his own dreams of performing, leaving Imelda (Miguel’s 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 beautiful underworld, it’s not long until Miguel encounters the souls of his own family — generations’ worth of long-dead but no less vivacious Rivera ancestors, including 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 (and skeletal) 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.
Phew.

“It was important to us from day one that we had an all-Latino cast,” says Unkrich, who with producer Anderson shepherded Toy Story 3 to become the world’s second highest-grossing animated film. “It focused us, and we ended up with a fantastic mix of people — some from Mexico and some from Los Angeles.”

Bratt was cast relatively early on — Unkrich says he was the first, in fact — but Bernal took some more internal legwork. “Gael was someone we were considering early on, but I didn’t know if I’d be able to sell him [to Pixar chief John Lasseter] because he’s done so many films I’ve loved through the years, but he hadn’t really done comedy,” Unkrich tells EW. “Thankfully, our casting director said, ‘Have you seen this new show that Gael’s in?’ And it was Mozart in the Jungle, and I started watching and thought, ‘Oh my God, he’s so funny, he’s so charming, and he’s perfect.’ So, thank God for Mozart. It didn’t take any convincing on John’s part.”

Meanwhile, Gonzalez is a newcomer triple-threat who does all his own singing in the movie and came to the filmmakers’ attention during a nationwide search for Miguel — and not just as the character’s final voice, but his scratch (or temporary) one. “We actually had another kid doing scratch for Miguel who’s now 17 or 18, which should tell you how long we’ve been working on the movie, but his voice changed long ago, and it was actually in trying to find a new voice for the scratch that we found Anthony,” says Unkrich.

EW’s got plenty more Coco coming your way to tide you over until the film is released on Nov. 22, 2017. In the meantime, whet your Pixar appetite with Cars 3, dropping June 16, 2017.

COCO's Cast:

Miguel, played by newcomer Anthony Gonzalez:

Coco’s main character, Miguel, will be voiced by twelve-year-old newcomer Anthony Gonzales! #PixarCoco pic.twitter.com/sxv1eqYgRt

— Lee Unkrich (@leeunkrich) December 6, 2016

Hector, played by Gael García Bernal:

Miguel’s companion on his journey, Hector, will be voiced by Gael García Bernal! @GaelGarciaB #PixarCoco pic.twitter.com/JvXhGVvoEP

— Lee Unkrich (@leeunkrich) December 6, 2016

Ernesto de la Cruz, played by Benjamin Bratt:

Miguel’s idol, Ernesto de la Cruz, will be voiced by Benjamin Bratt! #PixarCoco pic.twitter.com/hADx0SZf9v

— Lee Unkrich (@leeunkrich) December 6, 2016

Abuelita, played by Renée Victor:

Miguel's Grandmother, Abuelita, is the daughter of Grandma Coco, who is featured in the concept art pictured below:

Aspiring musician Miguel (voice of newcomer Anthony Gonzalez) feels a deep connection to his great grandmother, Mama Coco. Concept art visual design by Sharon Calahan and animation by Kristophe Vergne.

Vanity Fair- ​Pixar’s Coco Is a “Love Letter to Mexico” in the Age of Trump:

The most memorable characters in Pixar’s 21-year animation domination are rarely human. Usually, it’s the fish, the toys, the robots, and the cars that capture the most imaginations. And even when Pixar’s animated humans win hearts, they tend to come in cartoonish packages—like the boxy squares and cuddly spheres of Up, or the elastic and muscle-bound figures of The Incredibles. Even the remarkably realistic Riley of Inside Out plays second fiddle to the brightly-colored cartoons in her head. So it’s fitting that 2017’s Coco— Pixar’s upcoming film centering on the holiday of Día de Muertos, a 12 year-old boy named Miguel, and his journey to the Land of the Dead in search of his own heritage and history—would deliver Pixar’s most detailed and realistic human family yet. Because in the wake of an embattled election marked by hostile anti-immigrant rhetoric, America could stand to fall for the fleshed-out protagonists of a film that director Lee Unkrich is calling “a love letter to Mexico.”

Pixar is famously secretive about its projects. It’s a hush-hush culture Coco director Unkrich says was passed down from early Pixar angel investor Steve Jobs. But the company decided to try something new with its next original film, inviting a small group of journalists to view early footage and preview character concept designs. The team also officially announced that Gael García Bernal (most recently of Mozart in the Jungle fame) would be part of the cast, which also includes Benjamin Bratt, Renée Victor, and newcomer Anthony Gonzalez as Miguel. It was a jittery, exciting unveiling that producer Darla Anderson described as “terrifying,” while Unkrich likened it to dancing around in his underwear. Due to that legacy of secrecy, even the most die-hard Pixar fan only knew a few vague details about Coco’s plot. Until now.

The footage, raw though it may be, spun a compelling story about Miguel, a sweet kid who loves music despite the fact that his abuelita (Victor) banned music long ago, thanks to an ancient drama involving Miguel’s great-great-grandfather—a dashing musician—who walked out on the family. That musician, Miguel discovers at the start of the film, is his town’s most famous son: deceased film star and music supernova Ernesto de la Cruz (Bratt). On the eve of Día de Muertos, Miguel breaks into de la Cruz’s mausoleum in order to borrow the famous skull guitar that hangs there so that he can enter a talent competition and convince his family to embrace music again. So, yes, this is almost a musical (though Pixar is reluctant to call it one), with snatches of original and traditional music sung by Bratt, Gonzalez, Bernal and more.

Day 3 of Coco music recording in Mexico: Son Jarocho with Grupo Mono Blanco @monogil1 #PixarCoco pic.twitter.com/8yzcJuhfdS

— Lee Unkrich (@leeunkrich) November 10, 2016

All this is prologue to the real adventure: once Miguel touches the guitar, he becomes something of a living ghost. His family can no longer see him, but Miguel can now see all of his dead ancestors—who look like fantastically decorative skeletons—crossing over a bright bridge made of marigold flower petals from the Land of the Dead. Looking for help and answers, Miguel travels to the Land of the Dead—a dazzlingly vibrant, stacked metropolis inspired by the Mexican city of Guanajuato—himself and sets off an adventure with trickster skeletal companion Hector (Bernal) to find the rest of his family, de la Cruz, and the answer to how he can fix this curse.

The journalists taking in all this information weren’t the first outsiders to observe the Coco process. Unkrich first pitched the concept for the film in 2010, when Toy Story 3 came out. By 2013, the film was already entrenched in controversy. Disney filed an application to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to secure the phrase “Día de los Muertos,” or “Day of the Dead,” across multiple platforms. That move received instant and harsh backlash from the Latino community. One of the most intense reactions came from Chicano artist Lalo Alcaraz, who created a poster featuring a rampaging skeletal mouse. It claimed that Disney was coming to “trademark your cultura.” Disney swiftly pulled the trademark request, and Unkrich is now the first to admit the trademarking attempt was a mistake. The reaction it stoked, he says, was “personally devastating.”

​There were, however, positive consequences. Pixar chose to bring some of its harshest critics into the fold, including Alcaraz. He joined playwright Octavio Solísand former CEO of the Mexican Heritage Corp. Marcela Davison Aviles to form a tight-knit cultural consultant group for the film.

The core team that's making sure #PixarCoco stays culturally honest! @laloalcaraz, @mdaviles1 & @OctavioSolis5 pic.twitter.com/LKwg7Q10No

— Lee Unkrich (@leeunkrich) May 20, 2016

Coco writer Adrian Molina, who was promoted to co-director in 2016, says that working alongside Solís, Aviles, and Alcaraz (among others) was “crucial” to getting Coco right. “It opened up a great conversation—to be able to meet with people—because we understood there was such a responsibility. The great thing about it is that when we talk with our consultants—or even in my experience coming from a Mexican background—it creates a conversation of what the celebration means to them,” he says. It’s also part of larger effort on Disney’s part to craft more inclusive stories and get as much cultural input as possible.

Celebrando la vida de mis abuelos. Hope this Día de Muertos finds you filled with joyful memories of your loved ones. pic.twitter.com/HeSYVoqdw9

— Adrian Molina (@AdrianTheMolina) November 2, 2016

Coco is wholly unafraid to highlight highly specific aspects of Mexican culture. Whether it’s the musical influences on de la Cruz, the traditional ofrendas (offerings), a Xoloitzcuintli (a hairless Mexican dog breed) as Miguel’s pet, or the brightly-colored, over-sized Alebrijes (fantastical Mexican folk art figurines) that become guardians of a kind in the Land of the Dead, this is a film drenched in traditional culture that Unkrich and his team picked up from their own experiences and over several research trips to Mexican towns. “I’ll be the first to say that going on a few research trips doesn’t make us experts in anything,” Unkrich says, “but it would have been wrong for us not to go down. I knew from Day One, when John Lasseter gave the okay, that we had an enormous responsibility to tell this story right and to not lapse into cliche or stereotype.”

“We’re not trying to make the definitive Mexican movie,” Unkrich is quick to point out. And of course, Pixar isn’t even the first animation studio to make a film about Dia de Muertos: 20th Century Fox Animation beat them to the punch with 2014’s Book of Life. But while the two films share a few design and musical elements in common, Book of Life has none of the lived-in, realistic feel of Miguel’s Santa Cecilia family.

During the 2016 presidential election, all three of the cultural consultants Pixar tapped for Coco spoke out against the ascendancy of Donald Trump, whose promise to erect boundaries between Mexico and the U.S. was at the core of his campaign. Molina and Unkrich are aware that Coco will premiere in a world that is not necessarily the one they envisioned when kicking off the project in 2010.
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“The best way to bring people in and have them empathize with others is through storytelling. If we can tell a good story with characters audiences can care about, I’d like to think that prejudices can fall aside and people can just experience the story and these characters for the human beings that they are,” Unkrich says. Molina adds: “This family is my family. The reason I love them is the reason I love my family, and I hope it’s the reason the world will love a family like mine. I think that nothing bad can come from opening your heart to a story. I think only good can come from putting yourself in someone else’s shoes.”

And the empathy angle—one Pixar has accomplished masterfully for years with its toy, fish, and car protagonists—is made all the more potent as animation technology makes these human characters look ever more real. One animation expression test Unkrich showed off demonstrated how Pixar was able to capture the wobble of the abuelita’s jowls using the real Mexican grandmother of one of Coco’s animators as inspiration.

As Miguel travels deeper into the heart of the Land of the Dead, he is, of course, surrounded by skeletons. But these figures were carefully designed to maximize that famous Pixar emotional impact. “I knew at one point in the film [that] I was going to be in a tight close-up of a skeleton, and it was going to be a really emotional moment,” Unkrich says, explaining why his skeletons have eyeballs and lifelike features. “And I needed the audience to be able to connect with that character in a way [that] they forget they were watching animation. They forgot they were watching a skeleton. They were just seeing a soul.” For Miguel, his family, and his ancestors, that humanizing Pixar touch couldn’t come at a better time.

Pixar's Coco dances into theaters on November 22nd, 2017!