Pixar's 'Coco' Casts Benjamin Bratt & Gael García Bernal, Get The Latest Story Details

For the most part, we know roughly what to expect from Pixar's upcoming slate. Of the four films they've announced for the next three years, three are sequels – Cars 3, The Incredibles 2, and Toy Story 4. The sole exception is Coco, first announced back in 2012 and first named back in 2015. Details have been pretty sparse, aside from the fact that it's being directed by Lee Unkrich (Toy Story 3) and centers around the Mexican holiday of Día de los Muertos. But that changes today.

With about a year to go until Coco hits theaters, Pixar has unleashed a torrent of new info about their original adventures. For starters, we now know that the voice cast includes Benjamin Bratt and Gael García Bernal, and that the story centers around a little boy with forbidden musical ambitions. There's much, much more where that came from so click through to get all the latest on Pixar's Coco, including a new look at some art from the movie. 

Entertainment Weekly shared the Coco concept art above, and shared a detailed summary of the story:

Coco follows the secret musical ambitions of Miguel, who resides in a lively, loud Mexican village but comes from a family of shoemakers that may be the town's only music-hating household. For generations, the Riveras have banned music because they believe they've been cursed by it; as their family history goes, Miguel's great-grandfather abandoned his wife decades earlier to follow his own dreams of performing, leaving Imelda (Miguel's great-grandmother) to take control as the matriarch of the now-thriving Rivera line and declare music dead to the family forever.

But Miguel harbors a secret desire to seize his musical moment, inspired by his favorite singer of all time, the late Ernesto de la Cruz (Bratt). It's only after Miguel discovers an amazing link between himself and De la Cruz that he takes action to emulate the famous singer and, in doing so, accidentally enters the Land of the Dead.

In the beautiful underworld, it's not long until Miguel encounters the souls of his own family — generations' worth of long-dead but no less vivacious Rivera ancestors, including great-grandmother Imelda. Still, given the opportunity to roam around the Land of the Dead, Miguel decides to track down De la Cruz himself. He teams up with another friendly (and skeletal) spirit — a trickster named Hector, voiced by Bernal — to find De la Cruz, earn his family's blessing to perform, and return to the Land of the Living before time runs out.

Young newcomer Anthony Gonzalez provides the voice of 12-year-old Miguel, up to and including the singing, after landing the part in a nationwide casting search. Renée Victor will portray Abuelita (Miguel's grandmother). Here's some concept art of Miguel, revealed at last year's D23:

If you've noticed all the stars named so far are of Latino descent, well, that's no accident. "It was important to us from day one that we had an all-Latino cast," said Unkrich. "It focused us, and we ended up with a fantastic mix of people — some from Mexico and some from Los Angeles." It sounds not unlike the approach Disney Animation took to Moana, which featured an almost entirely Polynesian cast (the sole exception was Alan Tudyk, who voiced a rooster).

Coco is not a musical, despite Thomas Newman's comments last year. Still, thanks to Miguel's artistic ambitions, it looks like this could end up being Pixar's most musically oriented feature to date. At a time when Pixar seems to be returning to the sequel well a little too often, Coco has the potential to be a welcome change of pace.Coco is written and co-directed by Adrian Molina and produced by Darla K. Anderson. It'll be in theaters November 22, 2017.