“Zootopia 2” started with a doodle.
When directors Byron Howard and Jared Bush were finishing work on “Encanto,” Bush drew a logo for a sequel to “Zootopia.” It was the name of the movie with a “2” – and the “2” was a snake. Howard joked that the sketch has already been sealed away in the Disney Archives. “He already had the notion of a snake being incorporated into the second movie,” Howard told TheWrap. “We had talked in the first film about how there are probably reptiles that exist in this world, but we’re not showing them in the first film. Things were already percolating.”
“Early on we said that has to be about the Judy and Nick relationship and continuing that. If we’re not honed in on that, if we’re not deepening that, you don’t care. You can put any crazy set piece in there that you want. But if you’re not delivering on that core relationship and surprising people and challenging them and challenging those characters, it doesn’t matter. That was fundamental from the beginning,” added Bush, who, in addition to writing and directing “Zootopia 2,” is the Chief Creative Officer for Walt Disney Animation Studios.
Bush also said that as the movie went from screening to screening, with a half-dozen done in total, they were “trying stuff that’s never going to be in the final movie.” “Sometimes you have to try those things in order to find a better thing,” he explained. “You have to take risks. If you’re worried all the time about staying in limitations, you never find something that’s special.”
And based on the footage that was screened for select press at Walt Disney Animation Studios, “Zootopia 2” is definitely taking risks and pushing outside of what you’re probably expecting. There’s a giant car chase that opens the movie, with our heroes in hot pursuit of an anteater thief and a quieter comedic moment with Nick (Jason Bateman) and Judy (Ginnifer Goodwin), now partners, in therapy for cops that need to work on their communication skills. There was also a sequence where Nick and Judy are infiltrating a fancy party in celebration of Zootopia’s Zootennial, where we meet a powerful family of lynxes (voiced by David Strathairn, Andy Samberg, Macaulay Culkin and Brenda Song) and Mayor Winddancer (Patrick Warburton), the city’s new mayor, a golden-maned horse. There was another scene where Mr. Big (Maurice LaMarche), the Godfather-like shrew from the first movie, helps Nick and Judy get out of a jam. And a chase sequence through a tube full of water, set in a new area of Zootopia called Marsh Market (this sequence was also screened at Annecy earlier this year). There was even a sequence set in a secret area full of reptiles, including Jesus, a basilisk that they wouldn’t confirm but was definitely voiced by Danny Trejo.
Every sequence that was screened felt very different from one another but also of a piece – there’s a new mystery in Zootopia involving an ancient book, the lynx family (who were instrumental in building the “weather walls” that separate different biomes in the city) and the involvement of Gary (Ke Huy Quan), a snake that is key to unlocking said mystery. Yes, this is the very same snake from the logo that Bush drew years earlier.
Unlike previous animated features, there was never a catastrophic breakdown on “Zootopia 2.” For example, there was a moment in the development of the first “Toy Story” that was known as “Black Friday” because all hope seemed to be lost. And you can watch, via the fabulous documentary “Into the Unknown: The Making of ‘Frozen 2’” (streaming now on Disney+) how the creative team struggled, up until the last minute, with making sense of that movie’s ending. But Bush and Howard said there was nothing exactly like that on “Zootopia 2.”
“These movies are never easy. I think the idea is that you’re trying to make a movie that’s going to stand the test of time. It’s just really hard,” Bush said. He noted that roughly 1,000 people worked on the movie – artisans, technicians and animators spread across two campuses in Burbank and Vancouver – and that, at Walt Disney Animation Studios “everybody has a voice.” Because of this, Bush said, you’re constantly “pressure testing and trying things.” “Sometimes ideas that I think Bryon and I would go, like, We love this idea. And sometimes you go, Man, I don’t know if this is the idea. Let’s see if it plays out,” Bush said. And they would get the feedback. What Howard and Bush were constantly being reminded of was that “in the midst of all the entertainment that Nick and Judy are at the center.” The pair is really the core of the story, “not chasing shiny objects.”
Among those contributions from the team behind “Zootopia 2” was Mayor Winddancer. There had been different candidates – at one point the mayor was an elephant, another time Bush had thrown out the idea of “a buff kangaroo” (you can see it, right?). But Ami Thompson, an artist who had worked on “Ralph Breaks the Internet,” “Raya and the Last Dragon” and the short “Inner Workings,” proposed something completely different.
“Ami came in with the idea of using a horse, and I think on the first film we tried to avoid animals that were thought of as domesticated,” Howard explained. “But when she brought in that drawing of buff Winddancer with the shirt open and the backstory of him being a an action star who has now moved into politics, it was like, that is just gold. And then he just became a fixture of what the movie is. And he is just delightful contrast with the Lynxleys and, I think, mayors in general.”
“We had to do it,” Bush added.
Based on the footage that was screened, “Zootopia 2” feels even denser than the original film, which focused on the relationship between predator animals and their prey, not just in terms of the new area of the world and new kinds of characters, but in the plot. But did they worry that the density of the plot would take away from the movie’s emotional core?
“You’ll be shocked to hear that we worry about everything all the time,” Bush joked. But the origins of Zootopia was something that they always wanted to explore.
“The idea of going into history was something that we were always excited about, even while building the first film. We have literally thousands of years of history that we figured out to make the first movie that’s all super compelling and fun. You just didn’t see it,” Bush said. When Disney Animation was working on the “Zootopia+” series of shorts for Disney+, there were things that they had to shy away from, because it would bump into what they were doing for the sequel. “That’s all very intentional,” he further noted.
What’s so nice about this world, Bush added, is that it lends itself to going back into the history; if they stripped too much out of that history away, it would feel like any movie. “There’s an inherent desire to feel the complexities of that. And I think the trick is, depending on who you are, some people will recognize that and other people will go, ‘Oh that was really fun,’” Bush said. “It’s there for people that really appreciate that but it’s not confusing or distracting for people. We didn’t see reptiles at all in the first film. Why? And the only real way to tell that story is historically. For our animal rules, you have to invent a reason why reptiles have always been somewhere else where people didn’t know they existed.”
Among other things, “Zootopia 2” is a sequel to a mismatched buddy cop movie, which opens up other pitfalls. For every “48 Hrs.” there is, of course, “Another 48 Hrs.” “We went on a deep dive of all those things – What makes those things work? When do they fall short?” Bush said. “We’re very eyes-open on that for any sequel story, but certainly buddy cop stories, which is, those are rare-to-continue stories.”
While Bush and Howard couldn’t talk about the thematic underpinnings of “Zootopia 2” just yet, they did impart that the movie does have a deeper meaning, just as much as the original film was about prejudice, bias and division.
“I like that people can relate to it,” Howard said.
“We want people to go, Oh silly animals, and have a great time. And then there’s these other parts of it that feel completely tied to that sillier story but you go, Oh man, I’m surprised by that moment. I’d say the challenge of that is something that we like,” Bush concluded. “We’d rather have a challenge than not have a challenge. As storytellers, if it feels easy, then that’s not as interesting as you going through the process. Sometimes the difficulty of the puzzle is what makes it so fun.”
“Zootopia 2” opens everywhere on Nov. 26.
