SPOILERS for Turning Red are ahead. You can check out the movie exclusively with a Disney+ subscription.
Who else is bumping 4*Town from Turning Red? They may be a fictional boy band made for Pixar’s latest protagonist Mei to fall in love with, but those harmonies and catchy lyrics are the real thing. While 4*Town was a vital piece of Turning Red's story, there wasn’t nearly enough of the boy band in the actual movie, and the voices behind the characters agree.
The Turning Red filmmakers recruited some incredible voices to play each lovable member: Jordan Fisher’s Robaire, Finneas O’Connell’s Jesse, Grayson Villanueva’s Tae Young, Josh Levi’s Aaron Z and Topher Ngo’s Aaron T. When CinemaBlend spoke to them (minus Finneas, who is currently touring with his sister Billie Eilish), they expressed how they’d like to see 4*Town after Turning Red. In Ngo’s words:
Yo, that would be amazing. I would love to see a 4*Town short of them just on the road or in the dressing room of them just hanging out. Disney, if you’re listening that’d be a good idea.
In the movie, Mei introduces each of the members before she breaks some serious family rules and turns into her giant panda self to raise money to go to their concert with her group of friends. In the third act of the film, Mei leaves mid-panda ceremony to catch the show, and it ends up being the venue to her final confrontation with her mother, Ming, who ends up transforming into a huge red panda.
During the big scene between Mei and Ming, 4*Town ends up using their gift of song to turn Ming back into her human self. The boy band become heroes of the night and survivors of a mysterious panda attack. Wouldn’t that be a fun jumping off point for a short or spinoff? Work It’s Jordan Fisher had a very specific idea in mind for more 4*Town. As he shared:
I think a day in the life of the characters would be fun. A four-minute short of cuts of them waking up and all having very different days and there would be no dialogue, just like their action sequences of what that character would be doing throughout the day and what that’d ultimately lead up with them arriving at the arena playing a show or something like that. To me, that would be a really cute view into kinds of the ins and outs of an artist's life on tour.
During CinemaBlend’s interview with the real 4*Town, Fisher shared that he was very much emulating Justin Timberlake as the band’s lead singer, Robaire, who is Mei's favorite group member. He was interested in the idea of Pixar exploring more of 4*Town as a band outside of Mei’s own projections of the band. What are they like off the stage?
Of course, the point of Turning Red was not to get into the specifics of its boy band, but now that the fictional 4*Town has stolen our hearts and has songs playing rent-free in our heads, we have to wonder. Josh Levi, who was a finalist on The X Factor before lending his voice to 4*Town, had a juicy idea about more 4*Town. Here’s what he said:
I wanna know how they are as friends, are there some feuds? I want 4*Town MTV Unplugged.
Many boy bands have famously feuded and broken up over the years. While we can fill in the gaps based on our own favorite bands of the early '00s era and beyond, it’s just fun to imagine Pixar’s version of these musicians outside Turning Red.
The movie’s filmmakers also spoke about their ideas to bring 4*Town into Disney Parks, Sandra Oh threw out a great idea for a sequel, along with talking about the film pushing boundaries in terms of its subject matter about female coming-of-age. Stay tuned here on CinemaBlend for more exclusive coverage.
