Embracing authenticity

Disney-Pixar’s Coco becomes a huge hit by paying attention to culture, heritage

Over the weekend, audiences in the rest of North America flocked to what Mexican moviegoers had affirmed more than a month ago: Coco is an authentically appealing winner.

The Disney-Pixar animated film soared to a US$71.2 million U.S.-Canada debut to win the five-day holiday frame, topping such superhero behemoths as Justice League and Thor: Ragnarok, according to studio estimates Sunday. Coco grossed US$49 million for the three-day domestic weekend, according to Box Office Mojo, and has now pulled in US$153.4 million worldwide.

All the positive commercial and critical reception — Coco is rated 96 per cent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes — reflects how wise Pixar was to listen to its critics four years ago.

The company was about two years into the making of Coco when it committed a significant PR blunder. For its marketing, Disney in 2013 applied to trademark “Dia de los Muertos” — the U.S. name for the Mexican holiday the movie centres on — sparking a backlash from prominent Latino voices. Mexican-American cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz (La Cucaracha) helped give image to the outcry. Alcaraz created the Mickey Mouse-spoofing cartoon Muerto Mouse, with the caption: “It’s coming to trademark your cultura.”

The incident led to a realization. “We needed to make sure that even though we were reaching out to folks, we needed to make this movie differently than any other movie we’d made,” says Jason Katz, the story supervisor on Coco. “We needed to maybe not keep our cards so close to our chest.”

The course-correct seems to have worked. Coco, with more than US$48 million in Mexican ticket sales, is now the biggest film in its history.