‘Inside Out 2’ Is Going to Emotionally Wreck Us Again, Right?

Inside Out remains the best Pixar movie. That’s just simply my opinion but it is a movie that broke me in the theater. Emotional, poignant, and one of the first films to focus on a young girl and her struggles with growing up, Inside Out felt like a treat. Well, a treat that was designed to emotionally destroy me. Especially because, like Riley, I knew what it felt like to move away from all my friends and the life I knew to go to a new place.

During the Super Bowl, we got another look into the movie that brought us Riley back in action in her love of hockey!

With the upcoming release of Inside Out 2, we get to see a new addition to the emotions in Riley’s head. And while the cast is changing (with Mindy Kaling and Bill Hader not returning as Disgust and Fear, replaced by Liza Lapira and Tony Hale), the movie looks like a perfect continuation of a story many of us hold so dear. We have our first look at the movie with a trailer that introduces a new emotion—Anxiety!—and everything about Inside Out 2 looks just as perfect as the first.

A trailer that brings Anxiety into the mix

Anxiety has come to town. As Riley gets older, she is growing and her emotions are changing with her. One of those emotions is Anxiety (Maya Hawke). The other emotions, mainly Joy (Amy Poehler), are wondering why their control panel is being changed and are shocked to see an orange button being added. What they learn is that a new emotion has come to join them.

It means that they will all have to adapt to another change, much like they navigated Riley’s emotional instability in the first film. This trailer really sets the tone for what we can begin to expect with Inside Out 2 and if Anxiety is the new emotion in town, it’s waving a red flag for those of us who were already emotional about the first movie. Riley struggling with Anxiety is going to be a lot to handle. Can’t wait to sob in a theater again.

When will the film be released?

Inside Out director Pete Docter previously said “There’s no sequel idea from me at this point” when talking about a potential second movie with Entertainment Weekly in 2015. But he also said, “Never say never,” so I guess that’s how we ended up here.

At last year’s D23 Expo, it was announced that the sequel was being made and they were generous enough to give fans a release date. The film will be in cinemas in the summer of 2024. It will be directed by Kelsey Mann and written by Meg LeFauve, who worked on the original.

Will any of the original cast be returning for the sequel?

Amy Poehler, who voiced one of Riley’s (Kaitlyn Dias) emotions, Joy, will return. She even helped to announce the upcoming film and said that she had read the script and it was “amazing.”

Others returning include Phyllis Smith, who lends her voice to the character of Sadness, Lewis Black as Anger, and Diane Lane as Riley’s mom.

However, it might disappoint some fans to learn that both Mindy Kaling and Bill Hader, who voiced Disgust and Fear respectively, won’t be voicing their characters in the new installment. This could be due to the fact that Poehler was reportedly offered $5 million for her role while the rest of the cast was only offered $100,000 each.

Kaling confirmed that she wouldn’t be returning in an interview with The Wrap, “I had a great time working on Inside Out and am sure Inside Out 2 will be great. But I’m not working on it.”

Despite Kaling and Hader not reprising their roles, there are new characters joining the cast in the form of an array of new emotions for Riley.

What is the plot of Inside Out 2?

At the end of the first film, we see the emotions come across a button that reads “puberty” and they hesitate to press it, but there are hints that even without them doing so, Riley is already moving in that direction. Riley interacts with a boy at one of her hockey games during the last scene of the film and then goes on a date in the Pixar short titled Riley’s First Date. This, along with the introduction of new emotions, indicates we will see Riley’s journey through puberty and grappling with teenage life.

A short synopsis for the film reads, “Follow Riley, in her teenage years encountering new emotions.”

Amy Poehler told People just after the sequel’s announcement that the film does, indeed, surround puberty.

“In some ways, Inside Out set itself up for a sequel and we’re going there,” said Poehler. “We’re going to have what it feels like to be a teenager, the new emotions that live inside a young person’s brain. In many ways, it was really exciting. We knew exactly where we were. We go to the teen brain and we see the madness that lives inside there.”

(featured image: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)