2024 was a big year for Inside Out. Pixar’s sequel to the 2015 Oscar-winner dominated the box office, becoming the highest-grossing film both domestically and internationally, in addition to the highest-grossing animated film of all time. When Inside Out 2 arrived on Disney+, it shattered streaming records. So it’s very lucky for Disney that, even before the incredible success of the sequel, a series set in the world of Inside Out was in the works. Dream Productions is now streaming, a four-part animated series set inside a facet of Riley’s mind.
Taking place between Inside Out and Inside Out 2, Dream Productions follows the in-mind film studio responsible for interpreting Riley’s experiences as dreams, feeding them back to her each night. Like the films, the series shows what’s happening in Riley’s world and how the mechanics of her mind process that. In the case of the series, Riley’s first school dance is coming up, a Sadie Hawkins-style affair where girls are expected to ask boys. It’s new territory for Riley, and she’s understandably overthinking things, from what to wear, who to ask, and what the actual event will be like. Can her mind ease her growing anxiety?
The studio portions of the series, which account for most of the runtime, are in a documentary style, feeling like an animated version of The Office. The central character here is Paula Persimmon (voiced by Paula Pell), the most acclaimed dream director at the studio in Riley’s youth, responsible for Rainbow Unicorn’s biggest hits. Lately, her colorful and splashy musical dreams have been overshadowed by the work of visionary directors who dabble in more mature genres like action, sports, horror (nightmares), and comedy. And when her longtime assistant director Janelle (voiced by Ally Maki) is promoted to direct her own grounded dreams, Paula feels like the rug has been literally pulled out from under her. To make matters worse, she’s been given a new assistant director, an avant-garde indie-style experimentalist named Xeni (voiced by Richard Ayoade), who just so happens to be a nepotism hire by Dream Productions studio head Jean (voiced by Maya Rudolph).
While episodic, Dream Productions plays best all in one sitting. Each episode comes in around the standard TV show length of 21 minutes, which makes the four episodes easily binge-able, yielding a complete project that has a comparable runtime to the feature films that inspired it. There’s a lot of meta humor for film buffs, while the world is still very much grounded in the Inside Out aesthetic and style. The series feels tonally different from the films in some way while delivering a finished product that feels at home in that universe.
Michael Giacchino’s score from the first Inside Out film has tied music to our emotional connection to Riley’s mind since the first film, but part of the excitement of Dream Productions is its different approach to the score. One of Giacchino’s protégés, Nami Melumad (Thor: Love and Thunder), provides the series’ score, taking a jazzy approach to this Hollywood soundstage facsimile world. The series also features lots of needle drops, including some existing hits (OK Go’s “I Won’t Let You Down”), Turning Red’s 4*TOWN bops (“Nobody Like U” and “U Know What’s Up”), and three originals – “Sweeter (When You’re Dancing)” by Lily Elise, “Boom Go the Speakers” by Animatic, and an earworm from a Rainbow Unicorn toy, “Mermaid Unicorn.”
While Dream Productions offers something different for Inside Out fans, it never feels like too big of a departure, especially when you consider that we see HQ watching the dreams at various times, yielding cameo appearances from Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger, and Disgust (all voiced by their Inside Out 2 counterparts). Adults will no doubt recognize the mini Saturday Night Live reunion amongst the voice cast, reuniting Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, and Paula Pell. As with all of Pixar’s projects, the humor and tone of the series reaches for an all-ages audience, making Dream Productions a perfect binge this holiday season for the whole family.
I give Dream Productions 4 out of 5 hits of Melatonin.
Dream Productions is now streaming on Disney+.