Adrian Molina - COCO co-director and writer Coco - 2017
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Luxo, Jr. 16 posts TOM-4319 Luxo, Jr. 16 posts
TOM-4319
Hey guys haven't posted in here in awhile but I just wanted to share the news that Coco has a co-director and writer in Adrian Molina. This was confirmed today by a tweet from Lee Unkrich, director of Coco, on his personal twitter account (@leeunkrich) saying this, "Adrian Molina is not only my co-director on , he's currently serving as the film's writer!" As far as I know this is the first we're hearing of Adrian Molina's involvement in the film.

In addition (and I don't know if I'm thinking of the right Adrian Molina) but Adrian Molina has been a story artist a Pixar since Toy Story 3 if I remember correctly. His work can be seen in the Toy Story 3 Art of book (the storyboards of the great Ken dress up sequence.) I have also seen an animatic of his from his college days at CalArts that is on youtube somewhere that involves unicorns and narwhals fighting in the clouds, but I have no idea how to find that. Anyway just wanted to get the information out there. What does everyone think about this?
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TOM-4319 Luxo, Jr. 16 posts
TOM-4319
In addition to the information I posted above Adrian Molina also animated the 2D animated intro sequence in Monsters University!
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Bonnie Pizza Planet Truck Driver 674 posts
Bonnie
Couldn't find the unicorn narwhal thing, but I did find this;

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zye2vMhnlx4[/video]

Which is...nice. I kind of feel like it had a great parody setup and then didn't actually feel like a parody through most of it. 


Also found this on his IMDB page;
Quote:

Monsters University (additional screenplay material) / (opening title designer and director) 


I...might need to be seriously concerned depending on what "additional screenplay material" means.


Edit: Found the narwal thing.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6kNxf6axY4[/video]

Unfortunately it had its sound muted, so can't really judge the writing there (I didn't watch it, clearly there was a lot of lost dialogue and I feel like I'm missing too much).
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ReptilePatrol Senior Wilderness Explorer 297 posts
ReptilePatrol
His resume isn't exactly the largest, though I see on Lee Unkrich's Twitter that in a separate tweet he called Molina "mega-talented" and he also got a big shoutout from Gravity Falls' (!!!) Matt Braly (https://twitter.com/radrappy/status/723639680584003585) so that's looking pretty promising!
The way Unkrich worded his tweet made it sound like Molina will be Coco's only screenwriter, however. I think only five Pixar films have had only a single screenwriter (usually there's at least two if not a whole battalion), and the two that weren't written and directed singlehandedly by Brad Bird are Toy Story 3 (written by Michael Arndt), Cars 2 (Ben Queen), and The Good Dinosaur (Meg LeFauve). Interestingly, TS3 was also directed by Unkrich while Cars 2 and TGD are generally considered weaker Pixar efforts. And in none of those instances was the screenwriter also the co-director, so there's definitely an interesting setup going on here with Coco! Unkrich did a fantastic job directing Toy Story 3 even though he only had story credit for writing, and I've got my fingers crossed that he'll do the same for Coco. And I'm guessing Unkrich is going to get story credit for Coco (I don't believe there is a single Pixar film where a director has received neither story nor screenplay credit as well, though someone correct me if I'm wrong) though I haven't found *official* confirmation of that yet.
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Pixar Post - T.J. Forum Owner 3,082 posts
Pixar Post - T.J.
We're starting to piece together a nice group for who will be working on the film. Lee first noted (we summarized in our post), on April 6, that Danielle Feinberg would be the DOP-Lighting on the film as well. 

So we know...

Director - Lee Unkrich
Producer - Darla Anderson
Consultant/Writer - Lalo Alcaraz - Role is not totally clear, but we assume he was a consultant on the film since he's still working on outside projects as well. But, his Twitter lists him as a writer of the film as well...so looks like he'll be the outside writer they brought in on the project.
Co-Director / Writer - Adrian Molina
Director of Photography - Lighting - Danielle Feinberg
Character Designer - Daniel Arriaga 
Supervising Animators - Gini Santos, Mike Venturini
Animators - Eliza Ivanova, Dovi Anderson & Gwen Enderoglu
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Arlo Senior Wilderness Explorer 366 posts
Arlo
Wow TJ, thanks! This gives us a better idea of who exactly is working on the project! Kind of worried about Cars 3, though, I mean we are getting all these announcements about everybody working on Coco, yet Cars 3 comes out 5 months before and we have no word on who's doing what, except for John Lasseter executive producing the film, a screenplay written by Robert L. Baird and Dan Gerson (Rest in Peace), and a score composed by Randy Newman. Maybe I'm just being paranoid, but I feel like Cars 3 could possibly be delayed. But anyways regarding the roles of people working on Coco-I'm very happy that Mike Venturini (from The Good Dinosaur) is returning, I'm a big fan of his work, so it's great to see that he is coming back to another Pixar project. Also the following is just a rumor-but a couple years back a rumor was going around that Coco (then titled The Untitled Pixar Movie About Dia De Los Muertos) was going to be Pixar's very first musical, apparently it was leaked by Randy Newman in an exclusive interview. So could Coco be Pixar's first musical? I could definitely see it being a musical. And does this mean that Randy Newman is scoring Coco? Again, these are just rumors, but it is interesting to think about what new things Coco could bring to the Pixar table. 
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Pixar Post - T.J. Forum Owner 3,082 posts
Pixar Post - T.J.
Hey Arlo,

Just to pass along the details of the articles you were referencing...here is the article about Coco potentially being a musical. In it, Randy mentions that he's not the one scoring it, but that people are working on the film. There was also a rumor floating out there for a while that John Debney was working on the project (here's a link to that article)...but that's still unconfirmed and was only mentioned on IMDb (now removed).

It certainly could be a musical based on the topic (with it's celebratory nature, bright colors and instrumentation which accompanies the festival)...but we'll have to wait and see I guess. 
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Pixar Post - T.J. Forum Owner 3,082 posts
Pixar Post - T.J.
Adrian-Molina-Variety-top-10-animators-Pixar-Post.jpg 

Some more great news for Adrian - he was recently named one of the top 10 animators to watch in 2016 via Variety - check out our post summarizing the news! This was similar to last year when Josh Cooley was named to the 2015 list...which is actually where it was broke that he was co-directing Toy Story 4.
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Kris Wise 1 post
Kris Wise
this has been my all-time favorite youtube video. I was struck when Youtube took down the sound. I've kept up with different sources of its original audio. Here is one of the last left that i know of. I've also saved it for myself in case the internet lost it for good.

https://vtt.tumblr.com/tumblr_mrdsyg3Rxk1qmhd8j.mp4

Source post
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Pixar Post - T.J. Forum Owner 3,082 posts
Pixar Post - T.J.
Welcome to the forums, Kris! Nice work keeping tabs on a source of the video with the audio still intact! 
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CanadianPixarFan Alec Azam 57 posts
CanadianPixarFan
Pixar Post - T.J. wrote:

It certainly could be a musical based on the topic (with it's celebratory nature, bright colors and instrumentation which accompanies the festival)...but we'll have to wait and see I guess. 


It could very well be a musical. FROZEN was never marketed as a musical until after it's release because they thought audiences would have less interest in going to see a musical. Maybe they will go the same route and surprise us with it being a musical. Musical or not, music will obviously be a big part of the story. I can actually see it very well being a Justified Musical.

A Justified Musical is when the Characters have a logical reason to be singing, rather than spontaneously breaking into song at key plot points (I don't mean to sound like I'm criticising standard musicals, I LOVE musicals). An example of a Justified Musical is when the Characters have a logical reason to be singing, rather than spontaneously breaking into song at key plot points (I don't want to sound like I'm criticising standard musicals, I LOVE musicals). An example of a popular Justified Musical is the Broadway show Jersey Boys, about the real band Frankie Vallie and the Four Seasons. All the music in this show is justified because the band is either performing a show-within-a-show, recording in a stuido, or rehearsing. Since music is a big part of that holiday, it wouldn't surprise me if Coco took this approach to being a musical, or even just to sneak in a few catchy songs this way. Either way, time well tell and I am excited.
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