Nearly a decade after the original became a cultural and box-office phenomenon, Zootopia 2 is preparing to finally bring audiences back to the bustling metropolis. The 2016 film was a massive critical success, praised for its sharp humor and surprisingly deep social commentary, which translated into a worldwide gross of over a billion dollars. The sequel is already tracking to be one of the biggest releases of the year, with early buzz suggesting another critical and commercial hit for Walt Disney Animation Studios. While anticipation is high for the new story, which sees Judy Hopps (voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin) and Nick Wilde (voiced by Jason Bateman) tackling another case, the long gap between films gave the creative team time to revisit ideas that were left on the cutting room floor. ComicBook recently sat down with writer/director Jared Bush, director Byron Howard, and producer Yvett Merino to discuss the sequel, where they revealed which concepts from the first film are finally getting their moment.
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“Something we really wanted to do in the first film, and we didn’t get a chance to do it. We wanted to see hippos in the water,” Bush explained. “We had this idea of some sort of marsh area. We didn’t get to do it. In the first film, it didn’t make sense. There’s no character or story purpose to do it. And in this movie, knowing that we wanted to put Nick and Judy in places where they’d be wildly uncomfortable — that’s somewhat the story, and there are different types of animals — visiting a place that’s made for semi-aquatic animals, that would not be designed for land mammals like Nick and Judy, was super fun. So we got to take advantage of that.”
“There’s another place that we didn’t get to visit in this movie, that we also wanted to visit in the first movie, which is Outback Island,” Bush continued. “Sort of this area of Australian animals. We still have yet to actually go there, although we finally got to hint at it in this movie.”
There Will Be Other Opportunities to Expand the Zootopia Universe
The incredible success of the first Zootopia all but guaranteed its future as a core Disney franchise. The film’s record-breaking opening weekend for a Disney animated feature was just the beginning of a historic run that saw it become the second-biggest original movie ever at the time. With Zootopia 2 poised for similar success, the world so many fans fell in love with is clearly here to stay, creating more avenues than ever to explore every corner of the animal metropolis.
The clearest example of this strategy is Zootopia+, a series of animated shorts that premiered on Disney+ in November 2022. The series shifted focus away from the central duo of Nick and Judy to tell self-contained stories about some of the first film’s most memorable supporting characters, including the shrew mafia boss Mr. Big (voiced by Maurice LaMarche) and the surprisingly dramatic sloth, Flash (voiced by Raymond S. Persi). This format proved to be the perfect vehicle for exploring different genres and character perspectives that would not fit within the structure of a two-hour blockbuster. The positive reception to Zootopia+ established a precedent for the franchise to grow beyond the big screen. This means that a concept like Outback Island, an idea the creators have held onto through two separate film productions, does not need to be abandoned. Instead, it could serve as the perfect foundation for a future short, a special, or even another season of the anthology series.
Zootopia 2 is scheduled to be released in theaters on November 26, 2025.
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