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Inside Out 2 builds upon the internal world of the original 2015 film and adds new emotion characters into the mix, as human protagonist Riley prepares for the onslaught of adolescence.
Among the new emotions are Anxiety, Ennui, Embarrassment, and Envy, who join regulars Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust. Pixar films famously go through many revisions – Finding Nemo had a last-minute revision that transformed the story – en route to finalizing the narrative.
Inside Out 2 is no exception. Speaking to Total Film last year, Inside Out 2 director Kelsey Mann told Total Film that he had trawled the archives of art and storyboards from the first film for inspiration. (In the preliminary stages of production, iterations of the film are tested in roughly animated storyboarded versions of the film, so that the story can be locked before the CG animation and rendering begins).
"But there were so many good ideas," he said. "And there’s going to be ideas for this film that are really great ideas that are going to be put on the shelf, and who knows what will happen in the future? But there’s definitely a ton of great ideas that I mined from to do this movie."
More recently, Mann and producer Mark Nielsen told Total Film about expanding the world of the sequel. Despite the majority of the film taking place inside a young girl’s mind, it’s one of the most vast sets the studio has ever built. "This is a great world to play in," said Mann. "I feel like what Pete [Docter, Inside Out director] and the whole crew on the original film created is really a playground that we can go into. And in fact – and this is a great fact – when we made the first film, the largest set that we’d ever created at Pixar was the set inside an 11-year-old girl’s mind. But we only went to like 10% of it. So we could explore so much more."
And when Total Film asks if there were ideas that they couldn’t fit into Inside Out 2 as in the first film, Nielsen responds, "Absolutely."
"There’s some stuff that I know, like, 'That’s never going to work," says Mann. "And then there’s stuff that I’m like, 'That’s a really good idea, and that’s really funny. It needs to be seen at some point.'"
"There’s both characters and sets that landed on the cutting room floor that deserve to live and see another day," adds Nielsen.
As for whether there will be further Inside Out sequels, we’ll have to wait and see, but next year Pixar is set to release a spin-off series on Disney+ based on Riley’s Dream Productions.
Inside Out 2 opens in cinemas on 14 June. For more, check out our guide to the best Pixar movies, ranked.
