Jared Bush, Disney’s chief creative officer and writer/co-director of Zootopia 2, defended the nine-year gap between Zootopia and its sequel in a recent interview with ScreenRant. Zootopia, released in 2016, was a major hit, earning more than $1 billion worldwide and winning an Oscar for Best Animated Feature. Despite the success, nearly a decade has pᴀssed between the two movies.

Zootopia follows bunny Judy Hopps (voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin), who moves to the big city of Zootopia with dreams of becoming a police officer. She eventually has to work with a sly, con artist fox, Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman), to uncover a city-wide conspiracy. Idris Elba, Jenny Slate, J.K. Simmons, Octavia Spencer, Alan Tudyk, Tommy Chong, and Shakira rounded out the voice cast.

Even with the movie’s success, Zootopia 2 was only confirmed for release in early 2024. Talking with Bush at an early preview for the animated movie, Tatiana Hullender asked what goes behind Disney’s thought process when determining if they are going to prioritize animated sequels like Zootopia 2 or original stories?

“Tatiana Hullender: Jared, as Chief Creative Officer, how do you make the decision between, ‘We’re doing a sequel next,’ and ‘We are going to an original story?’

Jared Bush: It’s really a function of where the movies are at. There’s no sort of set formula, I’d say, as we look to the future and figure out what stories we’re going to tell next. It really comes from filmmaker pᴀssion. I’d say we’re really lucky that we’re surrounded by very brilliant people that want to create things, and sometimes they want to create something that’s a wholesale original new story. And sometimes, I think, like us in this movie, we love this world.

I think people sometimes misunderstand why we would do this. We love it. There’s no sort of edict of “sequel, not sequel.” I think we’ve been dying to get back into this world and continue these stories for a very long time, and that’s really, really fun.

As we’re stepping into the future, we’re always going to need original stories – I think Zootopia’s a great example of that – but then to be able to go back in the world… I think right now there is a nostalgia factor and there is something where audiences are saying, ‘Hey, we want to spend time with these characters that we love.’ I think that’s also important to listen to.

Zootopia 2 is set to premiere on November 26 in movie theaters, with Goodwin, Bateman, Elba, Chong, Shakira, and Tudyk returning. New cast additions include Ke Huy Quan, Fortune Feimster, Quinta Brunson, Jean Reno, Patrick Warburton, Macaulay Culkin, Andy Samberg, Brenda Song, and David Strathairn.

Disney Does Not Rush Sequels

Apparently, Disney doesn’t worry about the idea of striking while the iron is H๏τ when it comes to its animated sequels. Looking at the gap between recent movies from Disney and Pixar, which Disney owns, Zootopia 2‘s nine-year wait is pretty standard for a sequel.

That pattern holds true prior to those movies as well; the smallest gap we found in the last 30 years of Disney/Pixar animated movies released in theaters was the four years between Toy Story and Toy Story 2. It also doesn’t appear to be changing, as Frozen 3 has a 2027 release date currently, which would bring it to theaters eight years after Frozen 2.

Our Take On Jared Bush’s Zootopia 2 Comments

The data seems to back up Bush’s stance that Disney doesn’t necessarily prioritize sequels over originals, or that the Zootopia 2 gap of nearly a decade is all that strange for the studio. Despite the gaps, Disney is usually able to keep interest up in these projects; just look at Moana 2 making $1 billion last year.

Plus, Zootopia hasn’t been forgotten since the original 2016 movie. There was the Disney+ series Zootopia+ that allowed fans to catch up with these characters in between Zootopia and Zootopia 2.