‘Soul’ Director Says Streaming Release Was ‘Heartbreaking’

The director of Pixar’s Soul — who also happens to be the animation studio’s chief creative officer — says the way his movie was released was “heartbreaking.”

Pete Docter, who is also the director of Pixar classics like Monsters Inc., Up, and Inside Out, had the misfortune of being scheduled for theatrical release in the summer of 2020 — the height of the Covid pandemic, when many movie theaters around the world were closed and almost no films were released. Disney postponed Soul’s debut for several months but eventually, as the pandemic dragged on, they decided to let Soul skip theaters completely and go straight to streaming on the company’s still-new Disney+ service.

Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter for a piece on the 2021 Oscars, which were held under strict protocols at Los Angeles’ Union Station, Docter explained how he learned about that decision.

“As the film approached release, it got delayed and delayed again,” Docter recalled. “Finally Bob Iger and Alan Bergman called: ‘We are going to put it on Disney+.’”

READ MORE: ScreenCrush’s Review of Pixar’s Latest Movie, Hoppers

Docter claimed that at first he thought “that was something to be discussed” only to quickly realize “Oh no, they’re just telling me.”

“I’ll be honest, it was pretty heartbreaking,” he added.

Disney released three Pixar movies during the pandemic on streaming; after Soul they repeated the strategy two more times, for Luca and Turning Red. Pixar films returned to theaters with 2022’s Lightyear, which wound up flopping with audiences. The studio rebounded with their next two releases, Elemental and Inside Out 2, which eventually became Pixar’s highest-grossing film ever and the highest-grossing animated movie in history until it was recently dethroned by Ne Zha 2 and Disney’s Zootopia 2.

Soul is about a music teacher (voiced by Jamie Foxx) who dreams of becoming jazz piano star; after an accident, he finds his soul separated from his body and headed to “the Great Beyond,” where he’s counseled by another soul named 22 (Tina Fey) and struggles to return to Earth. As a film about the preciousnesses of life, it was certainly a timely release in the winter of 2020. It’s a shame it didn’t get a theatrical release, but I’m sure it brought a lot of people comfort and distraction at a time it was sorely needed.

“We had spent four-plus years on the movie,” Docter told THR. “We were approaching the end, and then, bam!”