By the D23 Team
Judy Hopps (voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin) and Nick Wilde (voiced by Jason Bateman) are back! In Walt Disney Animation Studios’ Zootopia 2, rookie cops Judy and Nick find themselves hot on the trail of a great mystery when pit viper Gary De’Snake (voiced by Oscar® winner Ke Huy Quan)—the first snake to be seen in Zootopia in a century!—arrives and turns the animal metropolis upside down.
Gary’s arrival, coupled with a secret surrounding the Lynxleys (Zootopia’s most prominent family), send Judy and Nick on a quest to infiltrate the Zootennial gala—a glamorous affair celebrating the 100th anniversary of the city’s weather walls. As the pair work together to uncover what’s really going on in Zootopia, they may even become fugitives themselves! Zootopia 2 also features the voices of Fortune Feimster, Andy Samberg, Idris Elba, Shakira, Patrick Warburton and Quinta Brunson.
Recently, D23 heard exclusively from the filmmakers—director/writer Jared Bush, director Byron Howard and producer Yvett Merino—about how they’re bringing this memorable new adventure into Zootopia to the big screen.
Howard on the process of returning to the world of Zootopia, and working with Bush on the film:
“Around five years ago, Jared did a little drawing that said Zootopia 2 and the ‘2’ was a snake. He had been thinking about that snake already—I’m sure he still has the drawing somewhere—and he showed me that. And we had always talked about the world having more than just mammals in it. Mammals are very important for the first movie because the predator/prey theme works so cleanly in the mammal world. So, he’s had it cooking for a long time. Jumping back in has been really easy because we have a shorthand, and we’re so in sync in a great way. Both of us bring something different to the [film] as far as how we lead—and the nice thing is that if one of us is not in the room, the other is probably in sync with where the other is going. It’s been great.”
Bush on approaching the story for Zootopia 2:
“Our first movie was basically a ‘buddy cop’ story—and the whole idea with a story like that is, you take characters from very opposite ends of life who don’t want to be together, and by the time you get to the end of it, they’re now a team. And likewise, with the story [set in the] world of the first Zootopia, the city was seemingly pretty perfect—and then you realize that there’s some difficulties there that they need to get through. Ultimately they do, and the city is healed. Knowing that both of those things had already happened in the first film, as we jumped into this next one, I think the trickiest part was figuring out how to tell a story that continues the journey of these characters and their relationship, and continues the journey of this world in a way that feels organic and interesting and expands what we think we know about Zootopia.
“Like Byron alluded to earlier, we’d always hoped to visit other places and to meet new types of animals. And the idea of bringing reptiles in was something we talked about on the first film a lot. For this story, it was, ‘Okay, well, why did we not see them in the first movie? What is the story behind that?’ It was that question that put this whole story into motion. How would that have happened? And why? How is that story going to be a compelling relationship story for Judy and Nick at the same time? And then trying to dovetail those two storylines. And so, without giving too much away, I’d say that there’s a difference between reptiles and mammals—just like there’s a difference between a fox and a rabbit—and paralleling those storylines was something that was really exciting.”
Howard on Gary De’Snake, and how Ke Huy Quan informed the character:
“Gary’s amazing… Jared had told me about Ke and how sweet and wonderful he is—and Gary quickly became the emotional center of the mystery story because you just love Ke so much. He really is the sweetest man on Earth. The choice to make him the voice of a potentially very scary snake, like Gary De’Snake, is huge. He’s an enormous blue venomous pit viper! A different voice could have had a very different flavor. But the fact that this adorable voice is coming out of this enormous snake is just great. When Judy and Nick hear about Gary’s plight, they’re on board almost immediately.”
Merino on the technology behind the film, and the incredible animation team that makes it all happen:
“What’s exciting about working on a continuation of a story is that you have the world that’s already established, but technology has advanced so much. We are constantly improving all of our processes here at Disney Animation; for years and years we were animating in the Maya [system], and we’re still animating in Maya for some of our classic characters. But now, we’re bringing Presto software into our system… it really allows the artists to go in and spend more time being creative. That’s how I see my role: what can we do so people have time to be creative and to actually focus on their art and what they’re doing?
“I absolutely love what I do, and part of it is because I get to work at the best animation studio in the world—and we truly have the best artists; people who are so passionate and dedicated about telling these stories and doing their part to make it all come together. No one person can do these films on their own. Everybody plays a role—myself included—in getting this feature up onto the screen and making it the best it can possibly be. When you’re working at Disney Animation, you’re with people who are passionate about what they do. There are people who are passionate about animation and how the characters move and act—and there are also people who are passionate about how the hair moves or how the cloth moves or how wind blows. It affects the final product. To work at a studio where people love what they do, it’s a gift to me every day.”
Both directors on what they hope audiences take away from the film:
Howard explains, “There’s just a joy to this world that I think people want right now—I certainly do. It’s a compliment to how Jared writes. There’s always this core of great, meaningful emotion buried under all of the silliness that we pack into these movies. It’s all super fun, but I think people also want something to care about—and something they can leave the theater feeling good about. It’s a super uplifting movie, and it’s really fun. I think people will just be so happy to be back in the world.”
Bush agrees, adding, “Something we felt in the first film was that people saw themselves, their stories and their relationships in that movie. And I’d think hopefully in this story, they do again. This is a story about two animals who are different—and do those differences matter or not? If they do matter, how do you get through that, or what do you learn about each other? Are you ever too different from someone else to hear them and understand them? Our hope is that people have an entertaining time and at the end, there’s something for them to think about in their own lives—and hopefully something here that helps.”
Zootopia 2 leaps into theaters on November 26!