Pixar has dropped the concept art for its next feature, Elemental, which will hit theaters on June 16, 2023. Disney already had the Father’s Day weekend date reserved for an untitled Pixar film.
Directed by Peter Sohn (The Good Dinosaur, Partly Cloudy short) and produced by Denise Ream (The Good Dinosaur, Cars 2), Elemental journeys alongside an unlikely pair, Ember and Wade, in a city where fire-, water-, land- and air-residents live together. The fiery young woman and the go-with-the-flow guy are about to discover something elemental: how much they actually have in common.
The movie was inspired by Sohn’s childhood in New York.
“My parents emigrated from Korea in the early 1970s and built a bustling grocery store in the Bronx,” said the director. “We were among many families who ventured to a new land with hopes and dreams—all of us mixing into one big salad bowl of cultures, languages and beautiful little neighborhoods. That’s what led me to Elemental.”
“Our story is based on the classic elements—fire, water, land and air,” the director added. “Some elements mix with each other, and some don’t. What if these elements were alive?”
Pixar, after being sidelined to Disney+ with Turning Red and Soul during the pandemic, returns to theaters this Father’s Day weekend, June 17-19, with the Toy Story origins story Lightyear. The studio showed off the pic’s first half hour to great response at CinemaCon last month.