Coco movie trailer: Pixar is set to celebrate Day of the Dead with new film

Pixar has released its first trailer for the upcoming animated film Coco, which sees a young boy find the answers to his family history through a journey down to the land of the dead.

"Once every year, our ancestors come back to our world to see family and friends," the trailer's narrator explains, referring to Dia de los Muertos or the Day of the Dead (2 November). "But no living person has ever visited their world — until now."

Despite his family's generation-old ban on music, Miguel (Anthony Gonzalez) dreams of becoming an accomplished musician like his idol Ernesto de la Cruz (Benjamin Bratt).

Desperate to prove his talent, Miguel finds himself in the Land of the Dead. Along the way, he meets charming trickster Hector (Gael García Bernal), and together they set off on an extraordinary journey to unlock the real story behind Miguel's family history.

Directed by Lee Unkrich, the film, which has an all-Latino voice cast, delves into the rich and age-old South American festival during which the living pay tribute to the deceased. Keeping in mind the cultural significance of the storyline, Unkrich understood the pressures that would come with the project.

"The day John Lasseter gave the thumbs up for this movie, I immediately felt this huge weight drop onto my shoulders because I knew that we were doing something different than we had ever made at the studio," he told Entertainment Weekly. "For the first time, we were going to have this enormous responsibility to do right by this culture and not lapse into stereotype or cliché."

While we are yet to find out what kind of adventures Miguel has in the underworld, the film's trailer does bring to mind another movie on the same subject. The 2014's animated Book Of Life produced by Reel FX Creative Studios, also saw a young guitar-strumming boy travel to the World of the Dead to seek answers about the life, love and his family.

Will Pixar's version tell a different tale or will Coco be strumming to the same tune? We will have to wait for the film to release on 22 November to find out.

Watch, the Coco trailer below: