Coco

Coco (2017)

Timing: 1:45 (105 min)

8.197/10
20815

8.726/10
795938

8.4/10
700000

All about film

Video 46

Photo 133

Actors and characters

Release date

2017-10-27

Country

United States

Production

Walt Disney Pictures, Pixar

Genre

Family, Animation, Fantasy, Music, Comedy, Adventure

Budget

$175 000 000

Revenue

$814 641 172

Website

https://www.pixar.com/feature-films/coco

Director

Lee Unkrich

Actors

Anthony Gonzalez, Gael García Bernal, Benjamin Bratt, Alanna Ubach, Renée Victor, Jaime Camil, Alfonso Arau, Herbert Siguenza, Gabriel Iglesias, Lombardo Boyar
All actors and roles (10)

Scenario

Producer

Darla K. Anderson, John Lasseter

Operator

Matt Aspbury

Composer

Michael Giacchino

Artist

Audition

Carla Hool, Kevin Reher, Natalie Lyon

Editing

Lee Unkrich, Steve Bloom
All team (176)

• The project's working title was Dia de los Muertos, or «Day of the Dead» (this is the name of a holiday dedicated to the memory of the deceased, celebrated on November 1st and 2nd in Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador).
• Pixar employees had not worked with skeleton animation before, so they encountered a technological problem during the creation of the film. The Presto program, responsible for rendering, could not cope with clothing on skeletons. The fabric lay incorrectly on the bones, constantly getting tangled in the neck, legs, and arms, getting stuck in the gaps at the joints. The solution was to create a new program from scratch that handled clothing simulation on skeletons much better. But filling the gaps so that fabric wouldn’t get caught there was only part of the problem. The new software also handled volume exceptionally well. Each skeleton has 127 bones, and about 80 of them are visible to the viewer. The program allowed for the mass generation of characters, creating subtle changes that gave the impression of uniqueness.
• For the world of the dead alone, where much of the action takes place, 7 million individual light sources had to be created—from streetlights to tram car bulbs. To ensure they were all displayed correctly on screen, animators took a program created for the firefly scene in "The Good Dinosaur" and reworked the code. As a result, the program grouped light sources based on various criteria, instead of processing each one individually. This significantly reduced rendering time.
• For the world of the dead alone, where much of the action takes place, 7 million light sources had to be created – from streetlights to tram lights.
• Initially, Miguel (Anthony Gonzalez) was only supposed to play the guitar. When director Lee Unkrich learned that Gonzalez could sing well, it was decided that the main character would sing.
• The film constantly shows a flower. It's a marigold, which is the main flower of the Day of the Dead.
• While visiting one of the families in Mexico, the director and screenwriter Lee Unkrich noticed that a dog was showing interest in the offerings to deceased relatives on the home altar, and had to be constantly driven away. Unkrich liked this moment so much that he included it in the script.
• According to directors Lee Unkrich and Adrian Molina, the most difficult part of working on the film was animating the grandmother's neck. Molina even asked his mother-in-law, who lived in Mexico City, to come to the studio, where they tried to anger her to see how her neck moved. This proved not easy, as his mother-in-law was a good-natured person, but after several hours they finally succeeded.
• The landscapes of the state of Guanajuato, where colorful houses are located on the slopes of mountains, served as the basis for the image of the Land of the Dead.
• Work on the film lasted from 2011 to 2017 – a record-long time for Pixar.
• During the preparation, the authors and animators made five trips to Mexico to study the local culture.
• Due to the prolonged work on the film, the voice of the actor voicing the main character began to break, and Anthony Gonzalez was taken instead. The original actor voiced an extra in a scene where he points Ernesto to the stage.
• The film features many famous Mexicans – in particular, wrestler El Santo, actor Cantinflas, actors and singers Pedro Infante and Jorge Negrete, artist Frida Kahlo, political and military figure of the revolution era Emiliano Zapata, and actress Maria Felix.
• Dante's breed is Xoloitzcuintli, or Mexican hairless dog.
• Initially, the film was going to be called 'Day of the Dead'. In 2015, the Walt Disney Company attempted to register the trademark 'Day of the Dead', but the company was accused of cultural appropriation. A week later, Disney renamed the film 'Coco'.
• This is the first Pixar project to directly show the death of main characters.
• Work on the film continued from 2011 to 2017 – a record-long time for Pixar.
• Initially, the film was going to be called “Day of the Dead.” In 2015, The Walt Disney Company attempted to register the trademark “Day of the Dead,” but the company was accused of cultural appropriation. A week later, Disney renamed the film “Coco.”