It didn’t take long for Inside Out 2 to become one of the best Disney Plus movies. Like a song stuck in your head, the film charmed its way into our minds, resonating with so many of us at once across such a broad range of ages that it quickly became the biggest new movie of 2024.
“I hoped it would do well, but I never thought that it would do this well in so many places in the world – it’s incredible,” Kelsey Mann, writer and director of Inside Out 2, told me. It made such a splash when it premiered in theaters on June 14, 2024, in the US and UK (June 13 for those in Australia) that it broke numerous records.
Inside Out 2 is not only the world’s most highest-grossing animated movie ever; it’s the 13th highest-grossing film of all time globally, the first animation to surpass $1 billion, and the number one film at the box office charts in 2024. On the streaming front, it’s also the biggest new Disney Plus movie to premiere this year, attracting 30.5 million views in its first five days.
“It’s really a testament to what Pete Doctor did on the first film, with this idea of dealing with emotions, because everybody has them,” an overwhelmed Mann says of its success. “I can’t tell you how many times people have stopped me to tell me how much this film has meant to them, either for them personally or for their kids, teachers, therapists, psychologists. That’s the part that really affects me.”
Taking the reigns from Pete Docter
Before Mann, it used to be that Inside Out fans would go to Pete Docter, the director of the first film but now turned chief creative officer of Pixar, to express their joy and appreciation for the movie and how it had impacted their lives. Its growing popularity is what, in fact, prompted Docter to speak to Mann in the first place.
“Pete was like, ‘I don’t have an idea [for a sequel] – go for it,’ so I started to explore different ideas, and I knew one of them would be when Riley’s a teenager,” Mann says, adding “I met with a lot of experts from the first film, asking them what happens in the brain when we’re teenagers and immediately that started to feel like the right answer.”
Before mapping out the story for Inside Out 2, Mann says he first made a list of all his favorite movie sequels to try and work out what made them successful. The best advice he’d received was that “the sooner you start thinking of this film as an original, the better,” and that rang true for his favorite sequels, too.
“There’s a sense of originality to them, and the ones that I didn’t like just repeat the same story. They’re like, ‘that worked the last time, let’s just do the same thing again’, and it feels like you’ve seen it, so I wanted to do something a little more original [by making] the heart of it personal,” Mann says, going on to explain why he decided to bring himself into the project.
It has a lot of possibilities for drama, emotion, and to be funny – and that’s the three things we need in any Pixar film, especially an Inside Out film
– Kelsey Mann, writer and director of Inside Out 2
“I looked at myself as a teenager, what I was going through, and really, a lot of this is inspired by [looking at] some of my birthday pictures when I was growing up. I was kind of scanning them, because I wanted the digital copy of all my photos, and I saw a picture of myself when I was five years old. It’s my birthday. I’m surrounded by my family, and I have the biggest smile on my face. It almost kind of stopped me in my tracks.”
“I am so happy, and it’s not just some random day, it’s a day to celebrate me. It’s my birthday, and by that smile on my face, I was 100% doing that. And then I turned eight and 11 and 13, and you just saw that smile fade away, and I’m just staring at my cake when I’m 13, getting sung ‘Happy Birthday’ by the same people, who are wishing me happy birthday and singing. I hated being sung happy birthday to at that age. I hated the attention. I hated everyone looking at me.”
“If I go back to the neuroscience of what I was feeling, you become really self conscious at this age and you start to compare yourself to others. Then, if I really go deep down, I thought I wasn’t really worth all this celebrating if I go to the core of what I was really feeling. And so I wanted to do a movie that deals with that feeling, the feeling of not being good enough,” Mann says, adding, “that’s what I ended up pitching to the studio.”
Needless to say, Mann’s pitch was successful after going to Docter with: “It has everything we want in a follow-up. It has a lot of possibilities for drama, emotion, and to be funny – and that’s the three things we need in any Pixar film, especially an Inside Out film.”
The pressures of making a sequel
Despite having Docter’s blessings, Mann still felt the enormous pressure of making a sequel to one of the highest-rated Pixar movies. “I felt like I was directing Empire Strikes Back,” he shares, “I wanted to do a great follow up to a movie that everybody loved and I wanted to work with [director behind it].”
“I always tell Pete, you’re the George Lucas of the Inside Out world; he knows the rules, he knows the world, and so constantly I would be checking in with him on where I was – I would do that on any film even if it wasn’t an Inside Out film, I would check in with him because he’s the chief creative officer at the studio, and I love working with the guy.
“He’s one of my favorite people at the studio, so to have that opportunity to work closely with Pete Docter was really a true dream come true. He’s a brilliant filmmaker and he’s incredibly supportive. He allowed me to bring myself to the film, and gave me nothing but support from the beginning to end.”
Like Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Inside Out 2 made more money at the box office than the original, marking its inclusion in yet another accolade in the movie-making business and triggering another rollercoaster of success when it debuted on Disney Plus.
Using his personal experiences as a compass while consulting with Pixar and emotion experts like neuroscientist Dr. Dacher Keltner, who advised on the first Inside Out film, Mann narrowed down all of his ideas for new emotions in the sequel to just four.
“The first note I got [after the first screening] was to simplify it. The reason why the four [emotions] ended up in the film is because they’re all emotions that are self conscious emotions, which goes back to what I was talking about earlier. You start to compare yourself to others when you’re this age, and you become very self conscious.”
“You start to think about, how do I fit in? It’s all about that. It’s all about your peers. It’s all about how do I fit into this particular group of people? And so those are the emotions that made the cut, the ones that are really thriving at the console when you’re a teenager,” Mann says.
That also suggests there might be a lot left on the drawing board for another follow-up film filled with the initial emotions that Mann had first considered for the sequel, but of course, nothing about a potential Inside Out 3 has been discussed yet.
Instead, make sure to catch the Inside Out TV spin-off Dream Productions on Disney Plus while we wait for more.