12:24pm ET
Dante, the goofy, clumsy, happy-go-lucky, hairless dog from Pixar's Coco is the star of a Yahoo! Movie short.
Dante's Lunch — A Short Tail showcases the personality the dog will add to the movie and gives fans a sneak peek at what to expect when Coco hits theaters later this year.
Director Lee Unkrich, the director of Coco, is also the one who crafted this Yahoo! exclusive.
He tells Yahoo! that Dante is one of many unique and compelling characters in the Mexican-inspired film.
Unkrich took frequent trips to Mexico in order to experience the culture, the people, Dia de los Muertos and of course... man's best friend. The Xolo, also known as the hairless dog, is the country's national dog. It's an ancient breed, and Unkrich claims it's very prominent in Aztec legends about the afterlife--- where part of Coco takes place. While spending time with the dogs, animators quickly learned that their tongue tends to hang out of the side of their mouth and they are prone to lose some teeth (features shown in this short). Unkrich says "his [Dante's] tongue is almost its own character separate form him."
Despite many plotlines being revealed, Unkrich says the movie remains a mystery:
“I’ve been working on this film almost six years now, and the twists and turns of the story are old hat to me, because I’ve been immersed in it for so long, but we still do show work-in-progress screenings to different people and groups, and they continue to be surprised by some of the twists that the story takes. And so I feel pretty confident that we’ll at least surprise some of the audience.”
Here's the Yahoo! short Dante's Lunch:
See more of Dante when Coco hits theaters November 22, 2017.