‘Zootopia 2’: The Pawbert Twist, Andy Samberg, and the Big Last Minute Fix

[Editor’s note: The following interview contains spoilers for “Zootopia 2.”]

“Zootopia 2,” like most Disney Animation Studios feature films, took five years to make. But unlike in live-action filmmaking, the writing, pre-production, production, and post-production are not linear processes. In fact, they intentionally overlap: as story ideas start to form, the character design and world-building animation begin.

“We’re in development, pre-production, and production always, at all times,” said co-director Jared Bush when he was a guest on this week’s Filmmaker Toolkit podcast with his co-director, Byron Howard. “The really wonderful thing about that is you can pressure-test ideas, decide you’re going change something, and ripple it through the entire movie much more easily versus live action.”

Added Howard, “Animation is very visual. So, while Jared’s working on the script and ideas, people will sit down and do different versions of that. So we’re sort of precasting who those characters need to be for the movie, and that’s a great luxury.”  

This allows for a constant process of iteration throughout the making of the film, with animation informing the story, and vice versa. Howard pointed to the character of Nibbles Maplestick, voice by comedian Fortune Feimster, who helps crack the film’s big case. Initially, she was an ordinary member of the Zootopia Police Department, until she became a wild murder-mystery podcaster.

“She started out with like very simple drawings, but the crazier they made her in this development, the more we liked her. And then when Fortune said, ‘Yes,’ and came on to do the voice, she added her own levels of humor and craziness to her,” said Howard. “Then the animators get the character and take what Fortune did and what Jared did with the script and blend it all together.”

‘Zootopia 2,’ center is Nibbles, voiced by Fortune Feimster©Walt Disney Co./Courtesy Everett Collection

Character development is just one example, as “Zootopia 2” evolved on a far more global story level as well. “What we’re really doing for the first several years is figuring out what do we want to say with this story, so we’re defining the sandbox,” said Bush. “Making sure that we’re saying something that matters, that we have a true north, that’s usually an emotional or thematic true north, and typically with our movies, the plot may adjust within that.”

It also means the “Zootopia” team had the ability, late in the process, to address what they eventually learned was a major problem. It involved Pawbert, the outcast son of the Lynxley family, who is trying to help our heroes stop his family’s evil plans, but in the film’s big plot twist, turns out to be the villain himself.

“Until about seven months ago, so about five months before the movie was released, [Pawbert’s] personality was actually quite a bit different, and that was problematic,” said Bush. “He was a much more arch character, and when he did his heel turn, he went from being this cringey, awkward character and became this supervillain. When we were screening it, both internally and we did some audience previews, it just didn’t work because people felt like, ‘Well, so he was acting that whole time? I don’t understand how that works.’”

This would result in a significant pivot. From a writing standpoint, Pawbert was rewritten to be just as needy after the big reveal, and Andy Samberg was cast in an effort to play off the comedian’s nice guy persona.

“You think animation things needs to be locked so early, but [Andy] was really messing around in the booth,” said Bush. “There’s a lot of improvisation that goes on, and not just in terms of lines, but approach to the lines, little mannerisms and noises that our animators eat up. But that happens very late, and we have to be pretty nimble to capture all of it.”

To hear Jared Bush and Byron Howard’s full interview, subscribe to the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform.