I have something shocking to tell you: If you’re a movie buff, you need to watch Zootopia 2. I know what you’re thinking: “The Disney cartoon?” Yes, the hit Disney animated film is a must-watch for fans of classic cinema. Now if you’re still skeptical, what if I told you the film references classics like The Silence of the Lambs and The Shining? Does that change your mind? Because if it doesn’t, are you even a film buff?
Zootopia 2, the second highest-grossing movie of 2025, is now available to purchase digitally and will be available on Disney+ starting March 11, making it the perfect opportunity to see why this sequel is actually a must-watch for any cinephile. To catch you up, Zootopia 2 reunites us with rabbit cop Judy Hopps (voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin) and her friend, fox Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman), as they embark on a new case involving Gary De’Snake (Ke Huy Quan) that threatens the very existence of the animal metropolis Zootopia. The original Zootopia was released in 2016.
Director Byron Howard says the references are no accident. “We’re all film nerds,” he told Newsweek. “The history of visual storytelling is something that we take very seriously.” Yvette Nicole Brown, who voices The Bearoness, put it more personally: after the premiere, she went home, bought the film on digital and watched it alone, “pausing and rewinding because it’s chock full of bits of joy and fun and craziness.”
Newsweek spoke with Brown and Patrick Warburton, who voiced Mayor Winddancer, along with producer Yvett Merino and director Howard, about why the film references were so important to them, how Zootopia 2 speaks to a wide array of audiences, and why the message of the film is exactly what is needed right now.
A Love Letter to Cinema: The References That Surprised Everyone
One of the most unexpected joys of Zootopia 2 is how unapologetically it courts film lovers. The movie is littered with knowing nods to some of the most iconic films in cinematic history, including a pitch-perfect riff on The Shining and a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it homage to The Silence of the Lambs. For Warburton, who voices Mayor Winddancer, those touches were part of what made watching the finished film such a delight.
“I love that it’s PG,” Warburton said. “There’s just a little something for everybody in different generations. I did love all the film references. There are a number of them. There are ones that I’m sure I didn’t even get.”
Yvette Nicole Brown, who voices The Bearoness, had a similar revelation when she watched the film on her own after the premiere. “When I bought it on digital, I watched it and was like pausing and rewinding,” she said, “because it’s chock full of bits of joy and fun and craziness.”
For director Byron Howard, the references are the natural expression of a creative team that came up steeped in film history. He credits his father, an avid cinephile, for exposing him early to everything from Das Boot and Akira Kurosawa films to Superman and the Indiana Jones franchise. That foundation, he says, shaped the kind of storytelling he wanted to pursue.
“We’re all film nerds,” Howard said. “We grew up loving films. I think a lot of us learned—I would say personally—a lot of who I aspire to be from movies, from characters that I love, from decisions that I saw being made by these characters on screen. The history of visual storytelling is something that we take very seriously.”
The Silence of the Lambs gag, Howard revealed, started as a sprawling five-minute sequence before being whittled down to a single, perfectly timed joke. And the team’s approach to getting away with referencing a Stanley Kubrick horror film in a Disney animated movie? Classic ask-forgiveness-not-permission. “We tend to do the just-do-it,” Howard said with a laugh. “We like to apologize afterwards.”
Producer Yvett Merino put it simply: “The Shining is actually [a favorite of] all three of us. It’s one of our favorite films.”
The result is a layered viewing experience where adults catch the references first and kids catch them later, when they’re old enough to understand what movie their parents were quietly losing their minds over.
“We’ll hear the adults laugh first because they get the reference,” Howard said, “and then the kids are like, what is that movie? And you’re like, you’re too young. Not seeing this movie yet.” [laughs]
Something for Everyone: How Zootopia 2 Speaks Across Generations
Part of what makes the Zootopia franchise so durable is that it refuses to talk down to any single part of its audience. The films operate on multiple registers simultaneously: as action-comedies for kids, as sharp social allegories for adults, and as genuinely emotional stories about ambition, identity and belonging for anyone in between.
Merino sees that universality as the direct result of how the films get made
“I truly believe movies find you where you need to be,” Merino said. “You can go back to a film at a different point in your life and it will take on a completely different meaning because of the experiences you’ve had. You bring something else to it. That’s the magic of storytelling in the movies: you bring your world into it and you’re receiving the story in that moment in time. And when you come back years later, you’re a different person.”
Howard points to story rooms as the engine of that relatability. The team spends months excavating their own formative experiences, loading the films with so much that it resonates whether you grew up in the American Midwest or moved from rural China to Shanghai chasing a better life—which, Howard notes, is exactly how young Chinese audiences connected with Judy Hopps when the first film came out.
“Because these movies come from us sitting in story rooms for months and months talking about our own formative experiences, these movies are packed with that,” Howard said. “We hear hundreds of stories of people really relating to different characters. And because Nick and Judy are adults, they’re dealing with their adult problems, their family problems. The fact that we can be a mirror for our world—for good or bad—is something that’s relatable and super important for people to understand the storytelling.”
For Warburton, a self-described Disney adult who half-jokes about wanting his ashes scattered somewhere on Disney property, the film’s broad appeal comes down to something simpler: heart.
“It has to have something to do with the heart and the soul of the picture,” Warburton said. “As entertaining as it is, it has to do that as well, because it does make you feel a lot of things.” He was also quick to flag the film’s slow-burn romance between Nick and Judy—which Brown has been, in her words, “shipping like crazy.”
“I want this romance to happen,” Brown said. “I’ve been praying for this romance. They’ve now shared how they feel fully, and I think in the third one we’re going to have a little love.” Warburton, ever the skeptic, offered a more cautious prediction: “Maybe we will, maybe we won’t. It could just be like Moonlighting,” references the 1980s series starring Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd.
The Right Film at the Right Time: Why the Message Matters Now
It would be easy to call Zootopia 2 a timely film. It would be more accurate to call it a necessary one. In a moment when public discourse around difference, belonging and shared humanity feels more and more fractured, the film’s central argument—that leaning into what makes us different is the only way forward—lands hard with audiences and the creative time alike.
For Brown, the resonance is deeply personal.
“It’s very gratifying for me, and not just because of how well the movie did, but because of the message of the movie,” she said. “A movie that celebrates diversity, equity and inclusion in such a beautiful way, and encourages people to love each other and look out for each other. The fact that this film celebrates the ones that are fighting for the people that have less: that is everything to me. The fact that it’s doing so well is because that message resonates with people. We want a world that’s like the Zootopia.”
Brown drew a pointed comparison to Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone, which emerged in the 1960s as a vehicle for social commentary that television networks wouldn’t allow Serling to make directly. Disney, she argues, operates in a similar tradition: wrapping social truths in entertainment so they can reach audiences who might otherwise look away.
“You may not be able to handle us talking about how great it is for everyone to be different and wonderful together,” Brown said. “So we’ll create a movie and we’ll show a lot of animals—and we will show that they have cars that they can fit and habitats that they can fit, and everybody gets along and nobody’s the problem. You give somebody a little honey with their medicine.”
Howard is direct about what the films are trying to say—and equally direct that it isn’t politics.
“I don’t think it’s political,” he said. “I really think there are key things that we go through as human beings that we really need to talk about. That sense of compassion, that sense of equality, that sense of inclusion—I think those are basic human rights. We make a lot of choices, good and bad, as human beings, and we get into some pretty sticky situations, and it’s never going to be easy to solve. I love that we don’t try to wrap it up with a pretty bow.”
Merino frames it as Zootopia’s defining honesty: a fictional world that holds a mirror up to the real one, without flinching from what it sees.
“Zootopia is a great place,” she said. “But it’s also full of very deep problems and history that we all have to come to grips with and be honest with. We as humans find that we’re different from people, and our instinct is to run away and retreat back. Really it’s leaning into those differences that will allow us to move forward. I love that in this film we tackle those issues—just to spark conversation. It’s not a political thing. It really is just a human-life, living-in-the-world thing.”
Zootopia 2 is available to purchase digitally now and arrives on Disney+ on March 11.
