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  • 7 weeks ago
There is a great deal of evolution involved when it comes to movies developed by Walt Disney Animation Studios. Part of the creative process by the filmmakers is to repeatedly construct and deconstruct ideas until the best path forward is uncovered and pursued. In the modern era of the studio, the approach has produced a terrific track record when it comes to what’s brought to the big screen, but an interesting side effect is wondering about the versions of any given title that didn’t move forward. In the case of Zootopia 2, there exists a question concerning the time gap between the sequel and its predecessor.

In the long-awaited follow-up, audiences are reunited with protagonists Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) and Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman) in the immediate aftermath of their successful exposure of corruption at City Hall, but that wasn’t always the approach that the sequel was going to take. Speaking with Goodwin this past weekend during the Los Angeles press day for Zootopia 2, she told me that there was a version of the 2025 movie that executed a time jump.
Transcript
00:00And with Judy, I mean, again, this movie is nine years in the making.
00:03I mean, how, and knowing that just animated movies take so long to develop and they're
00:08constantly going back to square one, how much were you kind of aware of how much her story
00:11changed through the different versions of what Zootopia 2 was going to be?
00:15Well, there was another version that we did.
00:17I mean, I feel like there's always like the story that we're going to tell, but they do,
00:21but yes, there's different iterations of that.
00:23And there was a version of the story that was going to pick up a couple of years after
00:27the end of the first story ended.
00:29And I think the realization was that too, there was too much time for change and growth
00:34off camera to have happened.
00:35And it makes a lot more sense to bring the audience with us on, on the ride and like
00:39experience like the letdown of, you know, they've just saved, like Nick and Judy have
00:44just saved the city and like, but what happens like the next, like what's that hangover like?
00:48Sure.
00:48You know, and then how are the characters going to try and overcompensate or prove, in Judy's
00:52case, prove to herself that it, that, that it was like a, that she deserved to have had
00:57this win and now she feels even a greater pressure to prove herself.
01:00And anyway, going with her on that ride, starting a week later, I think was a really genius move.
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