The animated hit Zootopia won a boatload of awards and critical acclaim, and for good
reason — the movie was pretty much fantastic from start to finish.
But that doesn't mean it was an easy path to success:
"Fine, then we’ll have to do this the hard way."
From creative shake-ups late in the game, to a few… interesting moves during the marketing
campaign, here's the untold truth of Disney's Zootopia.
Darker early draft
The world of Zootopia wasn't always quite so cheery.
It was reported that an early draft of the script presented the city as "broken," with
a veneer of utopia but a "dark dystopian truth underneath."
The problem?
Well, this version of Zootopia didn't really feel like a place a person would actually
want to visit, and the studio worried viewers wouldn't connect to the city if it wasn't
a place they fell in love with.
They backed off that approach, which led to the vibrant and gorgeous Zootopia we ended
up getting.
​Kristen Bell’s slow cameo
Actress Kristen Bell is a bit on the quirky side, and apparently one of her greatest obsessions
is sloths.
This obsession became very public when her husband, Dax Shepard, surprised her with the
news that a sloth would be at her birthday party.
And she was so excited that she had a complete emotional meltdown.
"Are you so sad that one's coming to your party?"
"I'm so excited."
The video of the actresses freak out quickly became a viral sensation.
It was such a big deal that word got back to the Zootopia team, and they reached out
to Bell for a cameo as the voice of the lady sloth, Priscilla.
Shifting protagonists
The story at the heart of Zootopia is fairly unique for a Disney flick, and it turns out
that it actually changed a lot during the latter part of production.
Instead of telling the story from the perspective of do-gooder Judy Hopps, the original story
largely took place from the viewpoint of the wily fox Nick Wilde.
Director Byron Howard explained that the story took a "huge shift" midstream, because it
was hard to actually like Nick.
Howard also made it clear that he wanted audiences to start to fall for Nick at the same time
as Judy does, and that proved difficult when he was presented as the hero from the get-go.
Global newscasters
For the most part, Zootopia was pretty much the same film no matter which country or market
you watched it in.
But there was one subtle change that most people didn’t even know about: the animal
newscaster.
Disney tailored the character to animals that were popular and a good fit for each country.
In the U.S. and Canada, we saw a moose.
In Japan it was a tanuki.
Australia got a koala, and in China it was a panda.This is cool thing to do, but most
people would never even have noticed it unless they went on a worldwide tour of Zootopia
viewings.
Shakira’s curvy demands
This is a Disney movie, after all, so of course it had to feature a catchy musical number.
That fell to real-life singer Shakira, who voiced the animal pop star Gazelle and gave
us the hit song "Try Everything."
But Shakira also had some pull when it came to her character's look.
The early drawings of Gazelle were apparently very skinny, so Shakira asked the designers
to give her character some curves.
Disney obliged, and we ended up getting a Gazelle whose hips were incapable of telling
falsehoods.
​Nick's middle name
In Zootopia, the sly but loveable fox Nick's full name is actually Nicholas P. Wilde.
But what the heck does the "P" stand for?
Director Byron Howard revealed Nick's middle name is officially "Piberius," which is a
subtle nod to Captain James Kirk's middle name, Tiberius.
But how alike are these two characters, really?
"It’s called a hustle sweetheart, and I’m not the liar - he is."
"Hey!"
"Now look Krako, we're taking over the whole, uh, ball of wax.
Now, you cooperate with us and maybe we'll cut you in for a piece of the action."
Now that you mention it, Nick does have a bit of that same roguish charm.
Car talk
The team behind this film took their world-building responsibilities seriously, to the point of
bringing in automotive design legend J Mays to help develop the concepts for the different
designs that all these various animal species might drive.
What would a giraffe's car look like?
Or a hippo's SUV?
Those were the types of questions the filmmakers put to Mays.
The designer took his job seriously and made sure that each of the vehicles seen in the
film properly represented the animals they were carrying.
A sense of scale
The design team used accurate scales to excellent effect for some amazing action set pieces
in Zootopia, but even more went into those scenes than most may have realized.
Every single animal represented in Zootopia is made to scale, meaning the rabbits match
up just like they should when standing beside a lion, and a giraffe really is that much
bigger than a fox.
That design work even makes it into the world itself, with different areas and buildings
designed for specific types of animals.
Disney Easter Eggs
A Disney movie about a world of walking, talking animals is a veritable playground for Easter
eggs, and this one took full advantage.
It would take a while to name them all, but here are a few.
The calendar hanging on the wall in Chief Bogo's office features a shot of San Fransokyo
from Big Hero 6.
Another scene features two elephant kids ice skating in Frozen outfits.
And several Disney flicks get the spoof treatment on the weasel’s bootleg DVD cases.
The backlash
At this point it’s not really a secret to anyone that while the movie is a lot of fun,
Zootopia also tells a very poignant story about racial messaging, nature over nurture,
and the way we judge others.
"It may have something to do with… biology."
But that high-minded approach to a kid's movie didn't sit well with everyone.
Zootopia was met with a bit of a backlash once the film became a major hit, with some
pundits calling it a "muddled mess" and accusing the film of taking itself too seriously.
We aren’t sure how founded these complaints really were as Zootopia definitely had no
trouble receiving acclaim come awards season.
A furry frenzy
Though Disney films are typically marketed to families, the studio took a very sneaky
route to promote Zootopia to one very specific subculture: furries.
If you don't know, furries are folks who like to dress up as animals and… well… get
together to have a good time.
Apparently, Disney contracted a marketing firm to promote the film to furry fan groups,
with a plan to encourage them to tweet and share their own photos using film-specific
hashtags.
"Yes, Twitter exploded.
Twitter s--- itself."
Disney never actually acknowledged the play, but the paper trail definitely seemed to prove
it was true.
Regardless, the film was a huge hit.
So, umm, maybe it worked.
Funnily enough, this isn't the first time talking animals have had a clash with the
law on-screen:
"My friends call me 'Sexy.'"
"Oh, lucky you."
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