Zootopia 2 has continued a new trend for Disney that remains decisive, but it won’t end anytime soon. Zootopia 2 is the sequel to the 2016 Disney animated hit that won an Oscar for Best Animated Feature at the Academy Awards. The new movie brings back Nick Wolfe and Judy Hopps, the two lead characters from the first release, who are now partners for the Zootopia Police Department. Their first major case since Nick became a police officer, too, is to find a snake that has arrived in the city, the first reptile that has shown up in Zootopia in years.
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With Zootopia 2 getting great reviews and looking to beat the first movie’s box office take, expect Disney animation to make even more sequels.
Disney Animated Sequels Have Always Been Rare
Making sequels is a rare occurrence for Disney when it comes to its animated movies. Believe it or not, it wasn’t until 1990 that Disney made its first animated sequel, which was The Rescuers Down Under. This came after five decades of original Disney animated movies without a sequel. According to reports, Walt Disney was against the idea of animated sequels, believing it was just repeating himself. Even with The Rescuers Down Under, this didn’t change things much for Disney, which didn’t have another sequel until 1999.
Disney Animation released Fantasia 2000 in 1999. This film tested the waters for animated movie sequels in theaters. Several animated sequels went straight-to-video, but only two theatrical sequels arrived after Fantasia 2000, and the quality dropped on each release. Peter Pan: Return to Neverland hit theaters in 2002, and The Jungle Book 2 in 2003. That ended Disney’s experiments with making animated sequels for the big screen.
However, things changed in the 2010s, and it was all about the box office rather than the idea of creating something new. First up was Ralph Breaks the Internet in 2018. The first Wreck-It Ralph movie was unlike anything Disney had done to that point, looking more like a Pixar movie than anything. Pixar had already proven that animated sequels could be successful in theaters, and Ralph Breaks the Internet proved Disney could do it too if the quality remained high. This sequel made a little more than the original and was nominated for an Oscar.
Disney didn’t go wild, though. They kept limiting their sequels to the best properties. First up was Frozen 2 in 2019, and that film ended up grossing $1.453 billion, making it one of the company’s most successful releases. Up next in 2024 was Moana 2, which also broke $1 billion, an impressive number in the post-COVID-19 landscape. However, while both Frozen 2 and Moana 2 made a lot of money, the reviews were a little down from the originals, and that was especially true for Moana 2. However, Zootopia 2 has proven that it can maintain the first movie’s brilliance, and it appears it will keep up the big box office takes of the previous two animated Disney sequels.
What Disney Animated Sequels Could Follow Zootopia 2?
With the expected success of Zootopia 2, it seems likely that this will continue for Disney. Disney knows that it can make money on known properties, even if Zootopia 2 doesn’t hit the billion-dollar mark like Moana 2 and Frozen 2. The biggest idea is that Zootopia 3 could come a lot faster than this first sequel for that franchise. There is also an idea that Moana 3 could end up getting made, although the upcoming live-action Moana movie might stall that idea out.
Encanto is another movie that had a huge following that could warrant a sequel. The first film in that series didn’t light the world on fire with its box office take. However, one thing to remember is that, even if the original box office wasn’t huge, there have been a lot of fans who discovered the film later on home video, and that could add to the sequel’s chances for box office success. Other than Encanto, movies like Big Hero 6 and even possibly another Wreck-It Ralph movie could get made. Finally, Frozen 3 is coming in 2027, so expect the Zootopia 2 success to help pay dividends for Disney in the years to come.
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