Movie: Zootopia 2

One of the greatest challenges in making a family movie is ensuring there’s something there for adults as well as kids.

Judging by the adult laughter in a preview screening of Zootopia 2 this latest Walt Disney Animation Studios offering is a winner.

Certainly, there’s plenty on offer for younger audience members thanks to the continual colour and movement resulting from a movie featuring 178 animated unique characters (with variations of that number reaching up to 1,850, taking into account costume and fur changes) representing 67 species!

Around 700 crew worked on the film, which picks directly after the conclusion of Zootopia.

In the original Judy Hopps (voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin),the first bunny cop on the Zootopia Police Department, and con artist, Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman), teamed up to save the city’s predator population. The film concluded with Nick graduating from the police academy and teaming up with Judy.

In Zootopia 2 Judy and Nick are finding their way as new police partners and realising that they don’t know all that much about each other as individuals.

When the duo gets a tip on a smuggling operation, they take it upon themselves to go undercover to try to expose the scheme and end up in a hot pursuit of a crooked anteater driving a getaway catering van. However, things do not go according to plan. Chief Bogo (Idris Elba) puts them on notice and they are sent to partners’ therapy to work out their problems with Dr Fuzzby (a quokka therapy animal voiced by Quinta Brunson).

How these unlikely partners come to understand one another and work together provides the emotional core of the film.

Providing the action is their investigation into a decades-old mystery involving Zootopia’s most prominent family, the Lynxleys, and the arrival of Gary De’Snake (Ke Huy Quan), the first snake to be seen in the animal metropolis for 100 years.

When Judy and Nick infiltrate the Zootennial gala—the most glamorous party in town, celebrating the 100th anniversary of the city’s weather walls—they begin to unravel Zootopia’s biggest secret and, in doing so, become fugitives themselves.

Together with numerous new characters Zootopia 2 sees the return of a number of favourites from the original movie including Bonnie Hopps (Bonnie Hunt), Stu Hopps (Don Lake), Mr Big (Maurice LaMarche), Clawhauser (Nate Torrence) and Shakira as Zootopia’s favourite pop star, Gazelle.

Along with the very appealing Gary De’Snake, new cast members include Fortune Feimster (Nibbles Maplestick), Andy Samberg (Pawbert Lynxley) and Patrick Warburton (Mayor Brian Winddancer).

In promoting the movie, director Byron Howard and co-writer and co-director Jared Bush highlighted the importance of giving audiences  something new.

“The trick is maintaining the chemistry while giving the audience something new and interesting,” Howard explained.

“We wanted to make the relationship between Judy and Nick to be a bit more contentious. We wound up where they still feel like the characters that we know and love, but they’re going through something different.”

“It’s about Judy and Nick really seeing under the surface and figuring out what makes the other tick,” explained Bush.

“Nick is not a guy who easily gets in touch with his emotions, and he has to dig down deep to say things to Judy that he would never say to anyone else.

“Their relationship really touches on how our differences can feel like obstacles, but sometimes simple conversations can actually push through those obstacles. Sometimes, the simplest thing is trying to make a connection.”

How much of this message is likely to resonate with younger audiences is uncertain. Given the huge cheer when Flash the Sloth ((Raymond S. Persi) appeared it would seem the characters are what younger audiences love.

And there are plenty of those in this movie thanks to the inclusion of new environments featuring numerous reptiles (who were missing from the first Zootopia) and pinnipeds (semiaquatic animals including seals, sea lions and walruses).

It’s the colour, action and humour, aimed at both young and older audiences, that are sure to ensure Zootopia 2, like its predecessor, will be another mega global box office hit.

Zootopia 2 is currently screening in Australian cinemas.

© 2025 Disney Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved.