Welcome to the Great Before! Pixar has released the first official trailer for its upcoming summer movie, Soul, giving us a much closer look at its whimsical pastel-hued afterlife.
The trailer also gives Jamie Foxx’s character, middle-school band teacher Joe Gardner, a much more detailed backstory. After landing a life-changing gig at the best jazz club in town, Joe falls into an uncovered manhole and ends up in the afterlife. In this world, it seems like reincarnation very much exists, and so rather than Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory, souls end up in the Great Before, an academy of sorts for new souls to acquire personalities and learn about earthly delights (such as pizza) before inhabiting a body. Turns out, Joe isn’t quite as dead as he thought, and when he realizes he’s still breathing on Earth, he enlists the help of a life-deriding soul named 22 (Tina Fey) to help him find his way back to his body. (It’s a little like Finding Nemo, but with, you know, souls.)
Soul also stars Phylicia Rashad, Angela Bassett, Ahmir Questlove Thompson, and Daveed Diggs, and is directed by Inside Out‘s Pete Docter, alongside co-director Kemp Powers. It arrives in theaters June 19, 2020.
