Given how excited audiences have been for Zootopia 2, it’s not a surprise that the film garnered two Golden Globe nominations this morning – one for Best Motion Picture – Animated, and the other for Cinematic and Box Office Achievement. Writer-director Jared Bush gives credit to the more than 700 people who worked on the film.
“They poured their hearts and souls into it,” says Bush. “This is a story that people really wanted to put out into the world because they had something to say, and I’m super proud of it.”
A sequel to the 2016 Zootopia, this film introduces reptiles to the world with the addition of a venomous pit viper named Gary De’Snake, voiced by a man who Bush refers to as “human sunshine”, Ke Huy Quan. “We knew that we were going to bring in this highly venomous pit viper, but we wanted him to be the emotional anchor of the entire story, and there’s no one better in the world than Ke,” he says. “He’s the sweetest person in the world.”
Even though it’s been 10 years since the first film, Bush says the sequel has been in his and director Byron Howard’s mind the entire time. “Right at the end of the first Zootopia, we actually already knew that we wanted to dive back in this world,” he says. “Even when we were making the first one, Byron and I always thought that there were way more stories to tell. We found that no matter where you put a camera in that city of animals, it was entertaining and fun, and the ability of this world to hold up a mirror to human nature… it was delicious.”
Although they took a detour to make Encanto, Bush says the story of Zootopia 2 is as relevant now as it would have been back then. “People certainly feel like it has a lot to say about our world right now, but the truth is what we’re talking about is the patterns that we get into as human beings that are somewhat ever present,” he says. “The story would’ve held five years ago, or 10 years ago, or unfortunately 10 years from now. I think there’s something about human nature that sometimes it’s hard for us to get past our differences.”
