The Zootopia 2 trailer has given us our first look at Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) and Nick Wilde’s (Jason Bateman) next adventure almost a decade after the original movie was released. In a nutshell, the Disney movie will follow the pair hot on the trail of a mysterious snake who’s suddenly shown up in town, leading them to go undercover in parts of Zootopia they’ve never explored before.
Listen, we said ourselves that Zootopia deserved a sequel, but surely not like this. As you can tell from the premise above, Zootopia 2 is already setting itself up to be a total yawnfest. I’m not sure how much that matters to the target audience of under 10s, but hey, is there a more restless demographic than them? Regardless, I think our first few minutes of footage in the Zootopia 2 trailer highlight a real issue with Disney’s lack of creative engagement.
Following in the footsteps of Turning Red, Luca and Inside Out 2 (yes, I appreciate these are collaborations with Pixar), it feels as though the studio has regressed back to its cookie-cutter cash grab approach it took the minute it started churning out multiple streams of sequels and live-action adaptations. It’s not only the lack of imagination with the storyline that’s enraged me either – there was an obvious way to be much more playful with the title.
The Zootopia 2 trailer is lacklustre at best, but why isn’t the new movie called 2ootopia?
Disney, you can have this one on me. “2ootopia” (pronounced two-topia) would have been such a lightheartened way to inject some fun back into what is already proving to be a bit of a lazy launch. The internet often jokes about sequels adding their movie number into their title, and aside from us being genuinely hilarious on social media, it’s an easy win as far as kids films are concerned. Young’uns need something big and bold to grab onto, and that starts with the first impression a movie makes.
Surely I shouldn’t be telling the most famous animation company in the world how to do something as basic as their actual job, but if the best they have for Zootopia 2 is setting a snake loose in town only to be caught again, their heads clearly need a wobble. It’s certainly a nice touch to include a therapy session as a gentle way to poke fun at how we perceive ourselves – it’s definitely the strongest scene we’ve seen so far – but how much is that just superficial lip service? If you want to play it safe, it’s better to give the illusion of doing something different, and that’s exactly what Disney has done here.
I love Judy Hopps more than life itself, so I’m really hoping I’m wrong with my first-take assessment of the Zootopia 2 trailer. The fact I’ve not got a single interesting thing to say about it isn’t the best start, but at least there’s always time to rebrand to 2ootopia.
Zootopia 2 is set to be released on November 26, 2025.
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