It’s been an exceptionally long wait for Zootopia 2; Zootopia arrived in 2016 and opened up a whole new world of Disney lore, as well as a sophisticated story that is usually reserved for Pixar films. The fictional animal city struggled with the same issues of race, class, and bigotry that we do in the real world, and provided parents with a digestible way to bring their kids into awareness about the social order and the ways that it should be improved (ideally). That all said, Zootopia 2 is arriving at a time when those social issues haven’t exactly been solved to completion, and are arguably worse, leaving the filmmakers at Disney Animation Studios with some big new challenges in telling a suitable sequel story.
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Not only were the social themes of Zootopia 2 more difficult for the filmmakers to navigate, but the characters and their arcs also presented a significant challenge. This time around, we’ll see the city of Zootopia populated by a full menagerie of animals: birds, reptiles, amphibians, and other marine animals, in addition to mammals. However, directors Jared Bush and Byron Howard explain that to find a good story, they had to first identify which character would carry the heaviest weight, narratively and thematically. And this time, it wasn’t Ginnifer Goodwin’s Judy Hopps (the bunny) or Jason Bateman’s Nick Wilde (the fox): the key character we’ll meet in Zootopia 2 is apparently Gary De’Snake, who is voiced by Oscar-winner Ke Huy Quan (Loki, Everything Everywhere All At Once).
ComicBok was able to attend the Zootopia 2 press day, hosted by Disney and the filmmakers. During our interviews with Jared Bush and Byron Howard, we got significant insight into what makes Gary De’Snake such an important character in the sequel.
“You know, one of the things that we love about our animators and our designers is that [designing a snake character like “Gary De’Snake”] is a massive challenge, because no arms, no legs, just all he can do is express himself with his body shapes and even how he moves through the world,” Howard explained. “And if you watch, he’s actually a beautifully designed character, like every scale and the color and how it all works together is incredible.”
Gary De’Snake Is the Heart of Zootopia 2 (According to the Directors)
The plot of Zootopia 2 sees Judy and Nick get caught up in a conspiracy involving Zootopia’s politicians and Gary, the first snake to enter the city in years. Gary moves the two odd-pair cops with a story about his family being in peril, which leads to a road-trip adventure outside of Zootopia, where there are some star lessons to be learned about what life is like for other animals – like reptiles. The simple detective mystery is clearly going to be a vehicle for a larger discussion about not just living in harmony with our domestic neighbors, but likely what an entire world of conflicting views and beliefs (from people and cultures radically different from our own) looks like, and what it is to navigate it consciously and graciously. You know: the sort of easy story to tell to kids, through animation.
Though it wasn’t easy, Byron Howard spoke confidently when saying that with Gary as their Rosetta Stone, they were able to crack the story, and then, rise to the subsequent challenge of animating it:
“In finding what the core of the story is, Key [Huy Quan] as Gary’s voice, and Gary himself as the emotional core of the movie, asserted itself in a really big way,” Howard explained. “Like, as soon as we found Gary and the emotion behind his family and what he’s after, that really gave us the anchor point for the whole film. And so Gary not only had to be well animated as a snake and really appealing, but he also kind of had to carry a massive part of the story. He’s a huge part of that. The animator is a huge part of that.”
Zootopia 2 will be in theaters on November 26, 2025.
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