No animated movie dominated 2024 quite like Pixar’s “Inside Out 2.” The sequel, which saw lead character Riley, now a teenager, dealing with brand-new emotions like Anxiety (Maya Hawke), Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos), Envy (Ayo Edebiri) and Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser), was an instant sensation. The follow-up to 2015’s “Inside Out” (which won the Best Animated Feature Oscar) is now the top-grossing animated movie of all time and the eighth highest-grossing film ever and has appeared on a number of year-end best-of lists. For director Kelsey Mann, the only emotion he’s feeling is joy.
“To have the response be what it was for this film was beyond what I had hoped for,” Mann said. “I hoped that people would go to the theaters and see it. And man, did they show up. It was apparent from that first weekend that people were excited to see the next chapter in Riley’s life. And it was amazing.”
What makes the accomplishment of “Inside Out 2” even more impressive is that they were animating the movie during the actors’ strike. “I kept imagining it was like stocking up for the winter and we were slowly going through our supplies, and we’re like, I think we’re going to run out of food real quick,” Mann said. “We weren’t sure if we were going to finish on time.”
They did, with the team recording 35 actors in three weeks and getting help from across the studio, including from original “Inside Out” director (and current Pixar chief creative officer) Pete Docter. “It all turned out great in the end,” Mann said.
Mann is particularly proud of a scene in the middle of the film when Riley is trying to get to sleep and Anxiety is keeping her up, recruiting the mind workers of Imagination Land to work endlessly coming up with “every possible thing that could go wrong.” The filmmaker said that the oppressive dream environment isn’t typical of Pixar but “definitely reflects places that I’ve worked in the past.” The idea came from Mann’s own restless nights — “that anxiety of what’s going to happen tomorrow and when your head hits the pillow and you’re supposed to sleep, that’s when your mind starts to get to work.”
He discussed the idea with returning screenwriter Meg LeFauve, who cottoned to the idea. “Anxiety could do that to Riley — take the power of imagination, something that was used for good and play, and then switch it to this worst-case scenario,” Mann said. “That’s where the scene started.”
In constructing the sequence, Mann and his collaborators looked at a variety of influences. Anxiety barks at Joy (Amy Poehler) from a giant central screen reminiscent of “1984.” The moment where Joy radicalizes the imagination workers was based on Sally Field in “Norma Rae.” Mann remembers telling Louis Black, who plays Anger, “I’m going for ‘Network’ in this particular speech.” There are shades of “Jerry Maguire” in the scene as well. The sequence is also full of “fun little references to what it’s like to be working in animation,” Mann said.
The sequence is instrumental when it comes to the success of “Inside Out 2” as a whole, taking an identifiable problem (being racked with anxiety while you’re trying to sleep) and adding charming and funny elements while also making you feel so deeply. “I really wanted to make not only a fun movie but a movie that added a little bit of goodness to the world and would have an impact on people,” Mann said.
This story first appeared in the Awards Preview issue of TheWrap magazine. Read more from the Awards Preview issue here.
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