New Documentary Announced About Completing Disney and Pixar’s ‘Soul’ During Quarantine

From virtual school and working from home to face masks and more, the global pandemic has changed all kinds of little and big things around the world.

Paxar Soul Concept Art ©Disney/Pixar

For the animators working on Disney and Pixar’s Soul, the pandemic created a rather unique and different working situation.

Although Disney and Pixar’s Soul was originally set to come out in theaters earlier this year, and then received an updated theatrical release date for November, plans have changed for this new animated film. Soul is now set to be released directly on Disney+ in December.

Soul ©Pixar | Disney

According to Entertainment Weekly, Soul will also now be the subject of a new documentary about all of the work that went into making this film during such a unique time. Producer Dana Murray said there were “seven weeks of production left” when ordinances requiring individuals to shelter in place where issued. Kemp Powers, a co-director and writer on Soul, said they actually ended up “creating a documentary about the process of finishing Soul remotely.”

According to Murray, they were “lucky and blessed” to already be at the stage that they were in production because the “back-end is highly technical,” so the team was able to “literally grab their machines and go home with them, and [they] were up and running in a day or two.” Murray said everyone was “really resilient” throughout the whole experience and that the “silver lining” to finishing Soul remotely was getting to see into people’s lives — seeing their team members’ pets and families on Zoom.

Powers noted that when the team complete a film, they usually get to celebrate it in a big theatre and they simply weren’t able to do that this time. In fact, Powers has said “most of the folks who worked on Soul have not [even] seen the completed mixed film.” This experience was truly a unique one.

The documentary about the remote completion of Soul will be released at some point in the future, but no official date has been announced yet. As Entertainment Weekly notes, this film may be similar to the Frozen 2 making-of documentary, Into the Unknown: Making Frozen 2, we saw hit Disney+ earlier this year.

Although the movie has yet to be released to the public yet, early reviews of Soul show it’s set up to be another giant hit for Pixar. The movie currently has a 100% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The reviewers have stated that the movie is”nourishment for, well, the soul” and lives “up to Pixar’s impossibly high standards…[and] represents the very best the studio has to offer.

We cannot wait to see this film when it’s released and learn more about the process that went into making this movie! We’ll keep an eye out for more news about Soul and let you know what we see. Be sure to come back for all the latest updates!