Kelsey Mann is the director behind the year’s top-grossing movie, Inside Out 2. At $1.7 billion worldwide, his sequel to the Oscar-winning 2015 Pixar toon not only outgrossed that one to become the biggest Pixar hit of all time but won wide critical acclaim for taking to new heights of imagination and invention the concept of all these various emotions operating inside a young girl’s head, anxiety being chief among them.
Mann took the reins of this one from the original’s director and now-Pixar chief Pete Docter and made the most successful feature directorial debut of all time. During our interview, I asked what the Animated Feature nomination meant to him. “I was the guy [at Pixar] that was once printing out the Oscar ballots, you know, for everybody to kind of do their whole thing. And the fact that I’ve got a film on that ballot that I directed is incredible,” he said at Deadline’s virtual event Contenders Film: The Nominees.
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For Mann it was key to take this all to the next level in order to make it a success that isn’t just riding the coattails of what came before. “It was really important to me that we do something that was a worthy follow-up to the first film,” he told me. “And I did try to literally go in deeper with what Riley’s going to experience, because those are my favorite sequels — the ones that kind of enhance and grow and kind of explore things or a little more complicated. I think that what works really well with doing any great sequel is that you kind of go further along what people are dealing with in more complex ways.”
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As for fears it might not live up to expectations, Mann says you gotta think positively and not let negative thoughts get in the way. “You’re just trying to tell the best story possible,” he said. “You know, you have thoughts come in your head, which is like, ‘What if everyone’s gonna hate this, and what if it doesn’t do well? What if no one goes to the theater?’”
Mann emphasized the importance of a key character from the movie named Joy in describing how he overcame that anxiety.
“Now I’m thinking about how the film did, and it’s almost like Joy needs to come in and go, ‘What if it crushes it on opening weekend and it continues to go up and up in the box office and does great all over the world and becomes the top animated film of all time?‘“ he said. “But I did not think that at the time of making it. You know, you do need to make room for those positive thoughts of what could go right.”
Kelsey Mann can rest comfortable on his way to the Oscars that it did indeed go right.
Check back Monday for the panel video.
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