During the pandemic, Disney made the decision to send three different Pixar movies straight to its Disney+ streaming service. It was a choice met with some head-scratching and some well-publicized frustration on behalf of Pixar creatives, who felt their movies were getting shortchanged by being sent to streaming instead of being given a chance to hit the big screen.
With the lockdown long lifted and people flocking back to theaters over this past year, Disney has elected to rectify this decision. The company recently announced that it will be re-releasing those three Pixar movies that have previously only lived on the Disney+ streaming platform in theaters. It’s a fun bit of news that will certainly liven up theaters in the traditionally slower post-holiday months. Here’s what to know.
What Pixar Movies Are Re-Releasing In Theaters & When?
Rather than being released all at one time, the three movies are each getting an individual release date over the next few months. Here’s the schedule of releases:
- Soul will hit theaters on Friday, January 12.
- Turning Red will hit theaters on Friday, February 9.
- Luca will hit theaters on Friday, March 22.
Soul is one of Pixar’s more existential movies. It tells the story of Joe Gardner, a middle-aged middle-school music teacher and aspiring jazz pianist whose life hasn’t turned out exactly as planned. When he’s in an accident and falls into a coma, his soul leaves his body and accidentally ends up in the “Great Before,” a realm where all new souls are trained for life on Earth, where they’re sent to be reborn. Joe scrambles to reunite his soul with his body in time to get to an audition that might be his big break. Along the way, he rekindles his zest for life.
Turning Red is a delightful animated fantasy movie about family, navigating the tumult that is puberty for girls, and the sometimes fraught relationship between mothers and daughters. It follows 13-year-old Meilin “Mei” Lee, a Chinese-Canadian girl who discovers, to her horror, that she turns into a red panda whenever she gets overly emotional. To her surprise, she learns that her straight-laced, overprotective mother also had this problem when she was a girl and that she’s kept the family secret from Mei. Mei must decide if she wants to undergo the ritual that will separate the red panda from her body, or if she wants to accept it and all its messy imperfection as part of her.
Luca is the gentlest of the three films, a coming-of-age tale set in the Italian Riviera in the late 1950s. The story revolves around Luca, a young boy who has a secret – he’s really a young sea monster who turns human while he’s on land. He meets new friends, one a sea monster boy named Alberto, and another a human girl named Giulia. As Luca runs around the town of Portorosso on a summer adventure, he’s torn between his friendships with Alberto and Giulia while trying to hide his secret from the humans. As his relationship with Alberto grows more strained, Luca has to balance his longing to try human things while embracing his sea monster identity.
Get tickets to Soul, Turning Red, and Luca.
