What to know
Lee Unkrich first pitched the idea for Coco in 2010, when his Toy Story 3 was released. At first the hero was to be an American boy discovering his Mexican heritage, but the team decided to tell the story of a Mexican child instead and made several research trips to Mexico to understand the Day of the Dead. The writer Adrian Molina was promoted to co-director in 2016; he wrote the screenplay with Matthew Aldrich.
Michael Giacchino composed the score, and Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez wrote the song “Remember Me”. The animators had to work out how to give skeletons personality without skin, muscles or lips, and the marigold petal bridge between the two worlds was a technical challenge of its own. With a budget of 175–225 million dollars, Coco is the first film with a nine-figure budget to feature an all-Latino principal cast.
It premiered on 20 October 2017 at the Morelia International Film Festival in Mexico and opened in Mexican cinemas the following week, the weekend before the Day of the Dead. The Ukrainian dub was made by the Le Doyen studio, and Ukrainian cinemas showed the film together with the short Olaf’s Frozen Adventure. A sequel, Coco 2, is set for release on 21 November 2029; the date was announced at D23 on 14 August 2026, and Unkrich and Molina return as directors.
