“Lightyear” Director Angus MacLane Talks About Sox, Buzz Lightyear’s Robotic Companion Cat

Hi everyone!

This is the second in a series of stories from an early press day for the upcoming film Lightyear.

In Disney and Pixar’s Lightyear, Buzz has a robotic companion cat named Sox. Director Angus MacLane said that “it’s the character that makes you go ‘awww’.

Photo copyright Disney

The director said the cute sidekick is “designed to be a constant during Buzz’s journey through time”. MacLane talks about where the idea of Sox came from: After mentioning that he’s a cat person, he said that the idea really came from his enjoyment of animating limited characters. For example, MacLane animated the character WALL-E, Ken in Toy Story 3 and most of the toys in the Toy Story shorts. He explained, “These movement limitations that provide much of the charm and comedy of these characters. And I wanted to have a character like that for ‘Lightyear’.”

MacLane said that for Sox, he “wanted a robot character that had the limitations in terms of simple animatronic puppets”. His limited motion is a “true contrast” to other aspects of the film. MacLane said that Sox was designed with plenty of features: “He’s got a welding laser, he’s got long range scanners, hollow projectors, short range sensors”, just to name a few things that Sox can do. “He’s a scene stealer”. Sox is voiced by Peter Sohn, who is well known for being the voice of Emile in Ratatouille and directed The Good Dinosaur. ” Pete’s natural warmth, charm, and humor made him the first and best choice for this character.”

Sox is a cat we’ll be hearing much more about, there is already merchandise starting to be available for the character.

Disney and Pixar’s Lightyear opens on June 17th, 2022.