We’re nowhere near the debut of Disney’s next theatrical animated feature (Encanto, as we covered yesterday), and it’s usually within that time frame that the trailer for their NEXT one is released, so that it can play before their new one. We suppose Pixar decided to show off their next project a bit early. VERY early — it’s not due out for another nine months.
Mei Lee (voiced by Rosalie Chiang) is a young adolescent in Canada who’s got an embarrassing problem: her overbearing smother, Ming (played by Sandra Oh). But Mei Lee’s woes are much larger than that…literally. Whenever she’s stuck in a humiliating situation, it can really bring the monster out in her!
Turning Red will be directed by Domee Shi, previously responsible for the short film Bao. It was first announced last December during the Investor’s Call where about 10,000 project news items were dumped onto the poor, overworked press at once. All we knew at that time was it was about a girl who turns into something when she gets mad, which made us think of the Katie Ka-Boom shorts on Animaniacs, but the actual film is far from that:
Now that we’ve seen what Mei Lee turns into — a giant, fluffy red panda — we have to wonder: what’s the problem? Why hide? She’s absolutely adorable. Everyone would love her in this form. She could be on every Jimmy-hosted late-night show. She could sign a deal with a plushie manufacturer and be unfathomably rich before she enters high school.
Where can you expect to see Turning Red? Shoved onto Disney+? We have good news…Disney is finally feeling confident enough to allow us to see Pixar films on the big screen again. Turning Red will debut in theaters (we don’t know yet if it’s exclusive to them though). This ball of fluff lights up the screen March 11, 2022.
UPDATE: The poster has been released, and it sheds a little light on the use of Backstreet Boys in the teaser: Turning Red takes place in either 2002 or 2003. Just like Lilo & Stitch! A lot of weird animal-related crises were hitting the Earth that year…
