As Walt Disney Animation enters its second century, Chief Creative Officer Jared Bush says the studio is guided by three principles: joy, collaboration, and the courage to “swing for the fences.” That ethos is alive in Zootopia 2, which reunites Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) and Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman) on a case involving a slithering new suspect, Gary DeSnake (Ke Huy Quan), challenging both their partnership and their cross-species friendship.
For Bush and director Byron Howard, returning to this world is a personal journey, giving them the chance to reflect on how they’ve grown as storytellers since the first film. They spoke with The Nerds of Color and other select journalists at Walt Disney Animation Studios in Burbank, CA, offering a closer look at the highly anticipated sequel.
But first, here’s a look at the new trailer:
Much has changed since the original’s 2016 release. In those eight years, they reunited for Encanto, which earned the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Bush later became Chief Creative Officer of Walt Disney Animation Studios. Now, they return to expand a menagerie metropolis that serves as a visual metaphor for the complexities and possibilities of our own world.
Over the years, Bush and Howard have remained emotionally invested in the story, extending the story beyond the films themselves. Guests can explore Zootopia Land at Shanghai Disneyland, navigating animal-sized environments, meeting Judy and Nick, and helping solve a mystery on a trackless ride. The two also served as executive producers on Zootopia+, a Disney+ animated anthology series featuring six stories that take place during the events of the original film.
Their world-building efforts don’t stop at screens. The franchise is also coming to Disney’s Animal Kingdom with the new 3D attraction Zootopia: Better Zoogether.
“Usually, you’ll see a film come out, and then four or five years later, you’ll see an attraction open in the parks,” said Howard. “This is a rare confluence where the planets [are] aligned. The interesting thing is that we were making Zootopia 2 at the same time as Better Zoogether. So the characters and environments from this sequel feature in that show.”
The two have such a creative chemistry that feels almost effortless, born from years of collaboration and shared experiences. Bush worked at Disney Animation as an in-betweener on Pocahontas and then as an animator on Brother Bear and Lilo & Stitch, before making his directorial debut on Bolt. Each project has been a lesson in storytelling, collaboration, and emotional nuance. Howard, whose career spans Tangled, Zootopia, and Encanto, complements Bush with a playful sensibility and cinematic intuition that have only deepened over the years.
Their playfulness also defines both their friendship and creative collaboration. Howard jokes that he actually hired Bush to help on the first Zootopia, quipping that Bush should be thanking him for the opportunity and that he gets paid five dollars every morning.
“We set out to build an enormous, fun animal world that could hold many, many, many stories,” Howard said about returning for Zootopia 2. “There were just tons of things we could not fit into the first movie. The film is vast, and if there is one thing that Zootopia 2 has taught us, it is that we have only begun to scratch the furry surface of Zootopia.”
Bush adds, “I’ll say for me personally, the opportunity to lead this remarkable studio is thrilling and inspiring, as you can imagine, incredibly fun.”
Bringing Zootopia 2 to life meant more than reuniting Nick and Judy. It also involved expanding the city through world-building and introducing new characters.
“Everything you see in the movie has at some point been drawn by one of these artists. Every sequence starts from a small idea that the story team brings to life,” said David VanTuyle, co-head of story. “From the earliest scribbles to the final frame, each sequence began with storyboarding, a visual storytelling technique pioneered by Walt Disney himself.”
A few of the new characters include the influential Lynxley family — including Milton Lynxley (David Strathairn), a distinguished patriarch; Cattrick Lynxley (Macaulay Culkin), the ambitious eldest son; Kitty Lynxley (Constance Song), the sharp-tongued daughter; and Pawbert Lynxley (Andy Samberg), the easy-going runt. According to Bush, it was the Lynxley’s great-grandfather who wrote a foundational book and actually invented the weather stations that made it possible for all the animals in Zootopia to come together.
There are also new residents of Zootopia, including their mayor: Mayor Brion Windancer (Patrick Warburton), a former ’90s action star mare turned politician; Nibbles Maplestick (Fortune Feimster), a beaver who lives in Marsh Market and acts as a reptile expert and conspiracy theorist; and, finally, Jesus, a plumed basilisk lizard dressed as a cowboy who hangs around a Marsh Market speakeasy and convincingly uses a gross yet funny method to get Nick and Judy to eat to give them the information they need on Gary.
The new characters are only one aspect of expanding the world in a sequel. Zootopia 2 also explores uncharted territory, including Marsh Market, a district on the outskirts of the main city, surrounded by water. Populated by beavers, walruses, and other aquatic mammals, it serves as a bustling port for seafood and fishing. It is also a haven for outlaws and reptilian criminals. Unlike Zootopia, Marsh Market’s transportation systems move along aqua-ways, using docks, tubes, or even hopping along walrus heads.
Working closely with Byron and Jared to bring their vision to the screen, the artists navigate numerous steps, including lighting, animation, layout, cinematography, and environment design. One of the biggest challenges, however, is finding ways to break new ground, showcase fresh ideas, and expand the world while staying true to the Zootopia that audiences already know and love.
Since the animation process is expensive, VanTuyle implemented a collaborative system that fosters creativity while minimizing costly mistakes. This system brings together story artists, directors, and other departments in ‘story brain jams’ to test ideas, sketch sequences, and explore character interactions before committing them to animation.
One of the most ambitious sequences in Marsh Market illustrates this process perfectly. “We wanted to show reptiles and have Nick and Judy meet up with new, fun characters,” VanTuyle said. “That whole sequence is so packed with so many different types of things that every time I watch it, there’s something new. We got Jesus the basilisk, Nibbles the beaver, and Gary DeSnake; it’s so much fun.”
To capture the exact authenticity in the sequel, the team visited the Los Angeles Zoo and San Diego Zoo, observing real animal behaviors and dynamics to inspire new details for Zootopia’s inhabitants and inform both the story and animation.
The brain jamming sessions also sparked questions like, “We’d know we were going to this big party in Zootopia. What would animals wear? How would they interact? What would Nick and Judy see as they walk in? And what would they snack on?” Artists from across the studio pitched ideas, ranging from a lizard at the speakeasy that could burp out of its own skin to a live reptile band using their bodies as instruments — one playing strings with its tongue, another opening its frill while playing the trombone. “It was fun, collaborative, and challenging,” VanTuyle said. “Some of these ideas were a nightmare to animate, but they ended up on screen, and that’s what makes Zootopia feel alive.”
For VanTuyle, the goal is to showcase new species, biomes, and animals, thereby expanding the world in fresh and innovative ways. “What was so successful about the first film is that it gave you this unique animal world, yet kept it grounded and relatable to our human world,” he said. “We’d see things in there that we’ve all experienced, like trains or the DMV, so we could relate. It stayed true to the animals, their characteristics, and even their size and scale.”
Cross-department collaboration was key to achieving this playful authenticity. VanTuyle continued, “Byron and Jared were incredibly open to everyone. Ideas could come from anywhere.”.
Animators attended story jams and experimented with new characters and sequences, feeding their work back into storyboards and narrative beats. The result is a city that feels vibrant, cohesive, and full of tiny details that reward close observation.
Heads of Animations Chad Sellers and Kira Lehtomaki had found it rewarding to capture the unique ways animals move and to balance physical and emotional performances in animation. For Chad, the opportunity to animate a character like Gary was exciting because “he has to emote and gesture, and he’s a snake who doesn’t have arms, like you would typically have him making a character gesture.”
“Everything that we do here at Disney is really steeped in the legacy,” Lehtomaki said, reflecting on Disney’s influence.
Legends like Eric Goldberg use hand-drawing techniques that were the gold standard of the Disney Renaissance to shape modern Disney animated features. “Eric would handle Gary with all the shapes and gestures of his body,” she explained, pointing out how he would test story ideas to see if they could work in the film. He also gave Gary two tongues. “In real life, snakes only have one tongue, but he gave him the serpent tongue and then a more human-like tongue,” allowing them to avoid having Gary simply hiss.
Since the film stayed true to the animal’s anatomy, Gary’s movements are limited to slithering, while still allowing him to emote through blinking eyes, gestures, and tone.
“Animating something as simple as a rope is one of the most challenging things in animation, and Gary is basically just a big rope with a face,” Sellers said. “We rigged him like a rope and added a bunch of joints throughout his body.”
The team also looked back at other snakes the studio had animated in 2D. Sellers added, “The amount of character they were able to give these snakes in all those old films really influenced us when getting started with Gary and helped us see what we could take away from the masters who came before us.”
The team pushed that philosophy even further when it came to Gary’s eyes. The snakes from The Jungle Book, Robin Hood, and The Princess and the Frog all have eyelids that emote and blink, but in reality, they don’t actually have them. That’s when they decided to work without eyelids, although Gary still blinks.
“We achieved this with something we call the ‘lip brow’ or ‘brow meat,’ Seller explained. “Disgusting terms, but yes, you’ll see Gary blink even without eyelids.”
Brain-jamming sessions fostered collaboration across different departments in the studio. These sessions led to fun internal events such as the Animalcy Festival, a playful Zootopia-inspired take on the real-life Annecy International Animation Film Festival. After screening these ideas in the studio’s theater, it became their chance to cherry-pick the best concepts and see what could be incorporated.
Lehtomaki said, “We just had the animators go wild and dream up whatever they could for all these new characters.”
One of these ideas would need to shape how a snake would kidnap a lynx. But animating Gary was no small feat.
“The rope of the face is a real technical challenge in CG,” she said. “And if you look closely at the final film, you’ll see we’re all just a bunch of cheaters, because it’s not just Gary in there. If you frame through the shot, you’ll notice there are actually more than one snake. Some of these scenes had up to four or five layers layered together to pull off the effect.”
Both took pride in ensuring that even experts would notice the accuracy and care put into the city’s design and the characters’ actions, making the world feel both believable and engaging.
Sonically, the first Zootopia was playful yet grounded, with Oscar-winner Michael Giacchino blending jazz textures, brassy fanfares, and tender strings to capture the rhythm of the city. Each district carried its own musical identity, drawing from traditions as diverse as Indian tabla and sitar, to Indonesian gamelan, and South American percussion.
Yet for all his genre-hopping, Giacchino’s career across films, television, video games, and even live-action shorts and theme park attractions, they aren’t tied together by a single throughline. He shared, “For me, it’s like they’re all so different. Like, you know, Ratatouille is so different from Up, so different from Zootopia, so different from, say, Cars 2.”
Giacchino’s adaptability came from his grandfather, who was a tailor. He explained, “When I think about what I do now, I’m doing very much the same thing he did all his life, as I’m tailoring this story and this music to fit exactly what this particular film needs. So you can’t necessarily take the music from one and throw it in another. It’s not really going to work that way. I love exploring ways to be different. I would never want to just write the same score over and over for every movie.”
The challenge—and fun—for Giacchino in every project is to find a new, distinct voice and unique sound. He didn’t want to be “that guy” who has the same sound in every film. He noted, “So you’re always looking for ways to really accentuate the differences between all the films and celebrate their differences, too. I mean, that’s a big part of it as well.”
After seeing an early cut of Zootopia 2 nine months ago, Giacchino admits he had to hold back his full impressions. The company told him that it was not the final cut and that it would be improved. He said assuringly, “I tried not to think too hard about it, knowing a lot would change.”
The sequel’s music eventually crystallized upon the second viewing, allowing Giacchino to track the film’s emotion through different rhythms and beats. He explained, “I’m always asking, how do I feel? What would it be like in the characters’ shoes? I’m less focused on the slapstick and more on what the story is doing to Judy, to Nick, to Gary. Once I process that, I sit at the piano and search for those feelings — it’s a little like fumbling for a light switch in the dark. When I hit the right notes, I know it sounds like Judy, or Nick, or Gary.”
Just as Giacchino tunes his music to the emotional beats of Judy, Nick, and Gary, the filmmakers themselves are attuned to the feelings and challenges audiences face in 2026. A decade after the original Zootopia, the world became more polarized, and the story’s themes of empathy and understanding felt more urgent than ever. Developing a sequel that resonates without feeling preachy was central to Bush and Howard’s approach, ensuring the heart of the city and its characters still rings true for today’s audiences.
The focus on emotional truth and character-driven storytelling aligns squarely with Disney Animation’s recent arc. From Moana, which explored self-discovery, cultural heritage, and environmental stewardship, to Encanto, which delved into generational trauma, family expectations, and identity, and Wish, which emphasized activism, hope, and community, the studio has been honing stories that resonate on multiple levels. In this context, Zootopia 2 faces the challenge of addressing a more polarized world while staying grounded in empathy and inclusivity, asking not just what makes a good sequel, but what stories families need to see right now.
Zootopia has always been about more than just its bustling streets or quirky characters. It’s about hope, connection, and the ways stories can resonate across generations. For the sequel, Bush saw “this amazing opportunity to bring light into the world, to transport our audiences to wondrous new places with fun, memorable characters.”
In addition to original films like Hex, filmmakers hope to continue exploring characters that we love. Bush laughed, “And after 100 years, we have a lot of characters.”
The filmmakers, storytellers, and artisans behind Zootopia 2 created more than just a sequel; they brought out a mirror to our world. Beneath the fur and paws, the film reflects human hopes, flaws, and the small, everyday acts of understanding that can bridge differences. Over the course of five years, the studio screened the movie internally five or six times, inviting feedback from the entire building and beyond. More than 1,300 people, between Burbank and Vancouver, contributed to making the sequel a reality.
Zootopia 2 hopes to be more than just a sequel that revisits the menagerie metropolis. As Bush puts it so eloquently, “This story about this mismatch pair of a bunny and a fox may even show us that in a world where our differences so often feel overwhelming, that sometimes simply just trying to understand one another and talk to each other can be the simple thing that allows us to find common ground together.”
Zootopia 2 opens in theaters on November 26, 2025.
