Pixar’s Hoppers Team Reveal They Knew Viral Lizard Would Become a Fan-Favorite Before He Was a Meme

It’s not often that a character from a movie becomes a viral meme before anyone even knows the name of the film he’s from, but that happened with Tom the Lizard ahead of Disney-Pixar’s Hoppers. Set to finally premiere next week, Tom quickly went viral after a tease of the movie was included during the end credits of last year’s Pixar movie, Elio. Featuring a lizard pressing the lizard emoji on a phone and a voice continuing to say “Lizard” out loud, the video spread like wildfire, and no one even knew it was a tease for an upcoming film.

Speaking with Comic Book ahead of the release of Hoppers next week, we asked the team what character in the film they thought audiences would be the most surprised by, given there’s always one like that in a new Pixar movie. Naturally, the answer was the one that they’ve already fallen in love with before they’ve even seen the movie with director Daniel Chong revealing: “I think that we already know what that answer is. He got so popular. He got popular before the movie came out. It’s Tom the lizard.”

Chong went on to reveal the secret origin of that Tom the Lizard tease and how they already knew they had a hit character on their hand well before the internet fell in love with his endless meme potential. As Chong revealed, early test screenings for the film began to shift from other characters as the audience favorite, to exclusively Tom the Lizard.

“We kind of got an inkling that he was going to be a fan favorite even before he became a meme. We were doing an audience preview, and the movie was kind of not done yet. And they asked the audience, ‘Who’s your favorite character?’ And everyone raised their hand, said, ‘We love Tom!’ Kids were yelling it, adults were yelling it. They all loved Tom. And he had like, this much screen time. And we were just like, what’s going on? What happened?  Because we had done other audience previews, and it was always King George, it was always Mabel, and they still loved those characters, but Tom was suddenly the rock star that popped out. And then, sure enough, a month later, he went viral.”

Chong revealed he was still confident that Tom the Lizard will not disappoint fans when they finally see the film, too, even though they’ve seen him in countless TikToks over the past seven months.

“I think people will still love him. I think he will definitely come through in the movie. He will deliver everything people want out of Tom. He will give. So he’s going to be the fan favorite.”

Hoppers, featuring Tom the Lizard, arrives in theaters on March 6.

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