Encanto and Coco are often mentioned in the same breath, but they are not the same kind of film and they did not come from the same studio. Encanto was released in 2021 by Walt Disney Animation Studios, while Coco came out in 2017 from Pixar.
The confusion persists because both films are steeped in Latin American culture and built around the pull of family. Encanto follows Mirabel as an outcast in the Madrigal household, where each member gets a special power in a coming-of-age ceremony and she does not. Coco is a musical shaped heavily by Latin American culture and centered on Día de los Muertos, the vibrant Mexican holiday that celebrates the lives of the dead.
That shared ground has made the two films easy to group together, especially since both are driven by music and both reached wide audiences. In Encanto, the songs were created by Lin-Manuel Miranda, and many of them made it to charts around the world. The film was also described as visually vibrant, with a story inspired by a magical house, Colombian culture and an emotional plot.
The overlap ends there. Encanto has no true Disney villain, only a family under strain, including the shunned Uncle Bruno and a dark secret at the center of the Madrigals. Abuela is disappointed that Mirabel has no gift, a detail that gives the film its emotional weight and separates it from a cleaner good-versus-evil tale.
That is why the question of whether Encanto is a Pixar movie keeps coming up — and why the answer matters. Pixar released Coco in 2017, but Encanto belongs to Walt Disney Animation Studios, which released it in 2021. The similarity is cultural and thematic, not corporate, and the two films stand as separate entries even if they share family, music and Latin American roots.
For viewers, the distinction is now plain. Encanto is a Walt Disney Animation Studios film, not a Pixar release, and its identity comes from the Madrigal family’s story rather than from the studio that made Coco.
