“Inside Out 2”, the new animated film from Pixar, is set in the mind of a pubescent girl. Boys and sex play no role. Why is it breaking records despite the European Championships?
Even the makers were skeptical. “If ‘Inside Out 2’ doesn’t do well in the cinema, we’ll have to think even more radically about how we run our business,” Pete Docter, head of the animation studio Pixar, said beforehand. Also because quality has its price: the current work cost around 200 million dollars, and nobody wants or can afford another flop. Almost a decade later and with a largely new team of creatives, the sequel should show whether the magic formula of the animation magicians from the Californian town of Emeryville still works. Whether the Pixar brand – a portmanteau of pixels and art – can still lure the masses into the cinema after flops like “Lightyear” or “Elemental”.