Walt Disney Animation Studios revealed their major animated feature film for 2016 at today's D23 Expo: Zootopia. Director Byron Howard (Tangled) and writer Jared Bush presented Disney fans with a look at the concept art, overall plot, and the complex animal city of Zootopia. The comedic adventure film follows Nick Wilde, a fast-talking fox who's trying to make it big, who goes on the run when he's framed for a crime he didn't commit. Zootopia's top cop, the self-righteous rabbit Lt. Judy Hopps, is hot on his tail, but when both become targets of a conspiracy, they're forced to team up and discover even natural enemies can become best friends. The filmmakers said they reached out to anthropologists and animal kingdom specialists for how animals might build a civilization in a world devoid of human beings. They joked that they initially created a wildebeest character as a smart-looking man in a business suit until scientists informed them that wildebeests are among the dumbest animals on earth, prompting them to alter the character to a dim-witted creature in a "I'm with Gnu-pid" t-shirt. In a nod to how the real world has animal habitats, Zootopia is divided into different regions for different animals of different environments. There's Sahara Square, a fabulously wealthy desert region patterned after Dubai and Monte Carlo complete with casinos and brightly lit nighttime cityscapes; the winter wonderland of Tundratown, where ice mountains are transformed into high rises; Little Rodentia; and the overwhelmingly cute and sweet Burrow Borough, home to a billion bunnies. Those are just a few of the areas of Zoolandia, which proved to be one of the biggest and best movie surprises.

Be the first to comment