Pixar Is Finally Making a Horror Movie With the Spooky Ghost Adventure GHOST MARKET

Pixar is finally stepping into the horror genre, and this could be a seriously fun change of pace for the animation studio.

Family-friendly horror has given younger movie fans some fantastic gateways into the genre. Monster House, Coraline, and ParaNorman proved you can throw ghosts, creepy houses, monsters, and genuinely unsettling ideas at kids without traumatizing the entire family.

The Nightmare Before Christmas turned its particular brand of macabre weirdness into a holiday institution. These movies don't come around nearly enough, but when they work, they tend to stick with audiences for years.

Now Pixar wants in. Pixar Chief Creative Officer Pete Docter officially announced a new film they are developing titled Ghost Market at D23.

This is a new supernatural animated adventure arriving in theaters in 2028. The film marks Pixar's first real plunge into a ghost movie, adding family-friendly horror to a studio that has already played with superheroes, science fiction, monsters, death, souls, and the afterlife.

Docter shared the concept for the movie: “Kyle is a fast-talking teenager and content creator from Chicago. His life gets turned upside down when his mom forces him to go on vacation to Hawaii.

“He stumbles into a mysterious hidden market in the middle of nowhere. He realizes his hunt for a late-night snack has turned into something bigger. He’s discovered the crossroads of the living and the dead.”

That's a great idea for a Pixar ghost story. The footage shown at D23 also offered a better idea of the movie's personality. Kyle talks directly to the audience and describes Ghost Market as “basically about hungry ghosts,” while attempting to reassure everyone that the movie won't leave them with nightmares for the rest of their lives.

A one point, a spirit holding a bowl of noodles then appears behind him. Kyle freaks out and takes off running while screaming the movie's release date.

The presentation fits Kyle perfectly since he's a content creator, but there's also a fun horror influence running through it. The handheld-camera approach calls back to found-footage horror movies and those paranormal investigation shows from the 2000s where apparently the smartest response to hearing a terrifying noise in a dark room was to grab a camera and walk directly toward it.

Oscar-nominated Pixar veteran Trevor Jimenez is directing Ghost Market, and the premise is inevitably going to draw comparisons to Hayao Miyazaki and Spirited Away. Both involve a young person entering a hidden supernatural world populated by spirits, with food and strange businesses becoming important pieces of the adventure.

But Ghost Market has its own ingredients to play with. The movie brings Asian folklore together with Hawaiian plate-lunch culture while telling its story through the perspective of a modern Chicago teenager.

The haunted kitchen, supernatural marketplace, and paranormal delivery jobs also give Kyle something more substantial to deal with than simply escaping a creepy place.

The hidden location is known as ‘Ono Market, and setting the film in Hawaii also creates some obvious possibilities for Disney beyond the movie itself. Disney already has a major Hawaiian presence with Aulani on Oahu, while Lilo & Stitch and Moana have become huge parts of the company's lineup.

If Ghost Market connects with audiences, it isn't difficult to imagine ‘Ono Market food, merchandise, or themed experiences eventually showing up at a Disney resort or cruise ship. A supernatural plate-lunch stand practically sells itself.

More importantly, though, there's a lot of potential here for Pixar to make a great gateway horror movie. As a horror fan and someone who loves ghost stories, I'm excited to see how Pixar approaches the genre.

I liked the Ghost Market footage shown at D23, and it looks like Jimenez and his team understand that the scares can be fun without completely sanding off the creepy edges.

The standard I'm holding it against is Monster House. That movie set a high bar for family-friendly horror because it wasn't afraid to actually be spooky. It gave kids a legitimately creepy haunted-house story while still delivering comedy, adventure, and plenty of heart.

Hopefully Ghost Market can reach that same level. Pixar has spent decades jumping between genres, and letting the studio loose inside a world of hungry ghosts, haunted kitchens, supernatural food markets, and paranormal deliveries sounds like a pretty awesome next experiment.

Ghost Market arrives in theaters in 2028.