In perhaps the least surprising news of all of Disney’s D23 Expo this year, the company announced they are moving forward with a third film in their hugely successful Zootopia franchise.
Voice actors Ginnifer Goodwin (Judy Hopps) and Ke Huy Quan (Gary De’Snake) announced the project during the D23 Disney films event on Friay night. They revealed the film’s title treatment (and, yeah, it’s just called Zootopia 3) as well as the fact that it will introduce birds to the world of Zootopia. (Snakes like Quan’s Gary were introduced in Zootopia 2.)
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Few sequels in history have ever felt more inevitable than Zootopia 3 after Zootopia 2 grossed $1.86 billion worldwide, making it the biggest Walt Disney Animation Studios release in history. (Zootopia was already a massive hit, grossing over $1 billion — and Zootopia 2 made over $850 million more than the first one did.) Disney has never been a company averse to making lots and lots of money; of course they were going to produce a third Zootopia.
Zootopia has also gotten a Disney+ series (called Zootopia+, naturally) and is already the subject of several Disney theme park attractions, including Zootopia: Hot Pursuit at Shanghai Disneyland and the 3D animated movie Zootopia: Better Zoogether! at Disney’s Animal Kingdom park in Orlando, Florida.
The Zootopia franchise follows Goodwin’s Judy Hopps and her partner Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman), as they solve mysteries in the world of Zootopia, where everyone is an animal. (But not a bird, until now.)
Quick: Who would you cast as a voice of a bird in Zootopia 3? My pick: Brian Cox. I want to watch a parrot scream like Brian Cox.
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Gallery Credit: Erica Russell