As the highest-grossing animated film of all time, it's no surprise Inside out 2 It was nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Animated Feature category This Morning. Although that fact didn't ease the anxiety director Kelsey Mann felt when he set his alarm last night.
“I'm used to being driven at night by anxiety when something comes up the next morning, but I found that not only was she in the control center, Joy was there too,” Mann says. “I was really excited to wake up and hear what could happen.”
Not only is this special because it's Mann's first Oscar nomination, but being recognized for a sequel to a beloved Pixar film is the best part of his morning. “There are always high expectations for any film we do at Pixar, but doing a film that is a follow-up to a film that everyone loves so much… the first Inside out It touches on a very deeply personal side of people, and being able to continue that to a deeper level was a huge honor.
The film's high level of expectation is enough to cause anxiety at first, but more unexpected hurdles came with bringing back characters from a film made almost a decade earlier. “When I first started, I thought we could take Joey out of the digital box,” he says.[but] Technology had changed so much that we needed to start from scratch and start over, which was surprising to me but gave us the ability to give them a little bit of an upgrade.
A technological upgrade was necessary for the new main character, and the pressure of leading a film like this probably also helped with the creation process as well. “Anxiety was a very difficult character, technically, in terms of design and character really. She went through a lot of different versions to end up with the version that we ended up with, and what Maya Hawke brought to her was very crucial and very helpful in making the character so engaging and relatable.”
