When we got our last look at Disney’s upcoming movie Encanto, we met the Madrigals, the magical house that gave the intergenerational Colombian family their unique superpowers, and Mirabel (Brooklyn 99‘s Stephanie Beatriz), the lone Madrigal member who never received a gift. It looked great, but somewhat straightforward — but this new trailer reveals Encanto is anything but.
Seriously, this movie looks absolutely wild. In the previous teaser trailer, we mainly got the film’s implied message, which is you don’t need to be “special” to be special, a very uplifting sentiment. But today’s full trailer reveals the Casa Madrigal (which was created by a magical candle!) is falling apart and losing its magic, for some mysterious reason that the 15-year-old Mirabel sets out to discover and correct.
Somehow that journey includes hanging precariously off cliffs, climbing mystic mountains, and wildest of all, seemingly fighting what looks like a riff on Cerberus, the three-headed dog that guards the gates of hell in Greek myth? (If there’s a three-headed dog in Colombian mythology, which I have to imagine there is, my Google skills can’t find it. Apologies!)
It was also announced today that actor John Leguizamo has been added to the voice cast as Uncle Bruno, who briefly appears in the trailer to tell Mirabel that the fate of the family is her responsibility. He joins María Cecilia Botero as Mirabel’s grandmother Alma; Angie Cepeda and Wilmer Valderrama as Mirabel’s parents, Julieta and Agustín; and Doom Patrol’s Diane Guererro and Jessica Darrow as Mirabel’s sisters, Isabela and Luisa.
Encanto is directed by Byron Howard, who also did the wonderful Zootopia and Tangled for Disney, along with Zootopia co-director Jared Bush and The Death of Eva Sofia Valdez writer Charise Castro Smith, the latter of whom also wrote the script. The virtually unknown but up-and-coming composer Lin-Manuel Miranda has written several new songs for the film, including a rap for Leguizamo.
It’s the composer’s second partnership with Disney after Moana, but his work on Encanto is different. “The biggest difference is that I’ve been able to be sort of in since the ground floor,” Miranda told Gizmodo last year. “With Moana I was kind of the last guy hired. And they were really a couple of years into the development of the story before I started working on it.”
Encanto premieres in Australian theatres on December 2.