Disney Is Going Back To Its Roots With Zootopia 2, But Will It Be Enough?
Disney has been struggling lately — not financially, of course, but rather with its movies. The studio hasn’t seen a major animated movie success (especially one that isn’t a remake or sequel) since around 2018, when “Coco” was released. Since then, Disney fans have been graced with nothing but remakes and sequels — whether live-action versions of their favorite films or second, third, and even fourth versions of animated movies of the past.
New movie “Wish” in particular received much criticism from pretty much anyone who dared to go see it in theaters, with most reaming out the subpar animation quality, poor songwriting, and uninteresting plot. It’s true that many people rank this as the worst Disney movie of all time — but the studio is back once more with another promised animated classic this year.
After the blockbuster success of “Inside Out 2” in January of 2025, it’s no surprise that the studio is continuing to turn to the nostalgia associated with its older movies. The studio can recapture the hearts of its fans (and make bank on the Disney streaming platform when viewers undoubtedly return to rewatch the originals, too).
But Disney hasn’t been bothering to make much of anything original lately, which is why some viewers are already lambasting “Zootopia 2.” The studio is reaching to slightly more recent films to bring in more viewers — whether kid or adult — and not everyone is quite so happy about it.
There’s always the concern that Disney’s sequels will be a miss rather than a box office hit. After the much-anticipated “Moana 2” was found slightly lacking in the original movie’s magic, fans took to social media to complain. It’s also clear that not everyone is happy with the route Disney has been taking to force all of its animated classics into live-action form, too.
Mostly, viewers are worried that “Zootopia 2” will undermine the message and well-built world of the original. Sequels can lose their luster when it’s been a long time since the original characters have been worked with. A poorly-made sequel can sometimes ruin the fun of its prequel, too.
Despite all of these concerns, there is one important thing to point out about “Zootopia 2”: its production team. Byron Howard, the man behind the first “Zootopia” movie, “Encanto,” and the fan-favorite Rapunzel adaptation, “Tangled,” is in charge of making “Zootopia 2” a reality — and die-hard fans have a deep-seated belief that Howard can’t make a movie that’s a flop.
If you count his “Tangled Ever After” mini-sequel, you might even say he knows his stuff when it comes to reworking the magic of his original Disney films. Though fans are right to still be a little hesitant about Disney’s many sequels launching within the next few years, the team behind “Zootopia 2” might actually succeed at bringing the magic of the original back into theaters worldwide.
