Hoppers (film)

• 1. Introduction

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  Hoppers is a 2026 Pixar film about a college student who puts her mind inside a lifelike robotic beaver. Her plan is to talk with wild animals and rescue their habitat from human destruction. Instead, she accidentally sparks an uprising. Its director described the film as part nature documentary and part spy thriller, and the result is a comedy that keeps changing shape. How did a pitch about penguins turn into a story about beavers? Why did a small lizard become famous before the film even opened? And was the film's environmental message ever played down, as one report claimed?

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• 2. From Penguins to Beavers

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  In December 2020, Daniel Chong announced on Twitter that he was back at Pixar. He had just finished the Cartoon Network series We Bare Bears (2015-2019) and the film We Bare Bears: The Movie (2020). Back at the studio, he was developing an original feature. Pixar's chief creative officer, Pete Docter, revealed the title Hoppers at the D23 fan event in August 2024. Shortly after, Jesse Andrews, the writer of Luca, said on his own Twitter account that he had worked on the project for three years. In all, development lasted six years.

  Penguins were Chong's first choice for the heroes. Docter objected, because penguins had already led films such as Happy Feet, Surf's Up, Penguins of Madagascar, and Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl. Chong turned to research on how beavers change their surroundings. He later explained, "These animals can be these ecosystem engineers and help everyone else survive; I think that just made me go, 'Oh man, beavers are crazy cool.'"

  Nature documentaries that place robot animals among real ones inspired the central idea. Chong told D23, "It felt like it was ripe for comedy, this idea of how humans try so hard to fit into the animal world and the weird things that happen through that." He also acknowledged Avatar influences and a Mission Impossible spy-thriller quality, "because Mabel's kind of infiltrating the animal world."

  In December 2024, The Hollywood Reporter relayed a claim from a former Pixar artist. The filmmakers, the artist said, had been told to "downplay" the film's "planned message of environmentalism." Chong rejected this in a July 2025 interview with Screen Rant. "If anything, I felt a lot of alignment," he said. He added that every movie at the studio changes a great deal through iteration, and that colleagues might mistake that process for censorship. Whatever one makes of the dispute, the finished film puts the fate of a forest glade at the center of its story.

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• 3. Glade and Freeway

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  Mabel Tanaka spent her childhood in a forest glade near the city of Beaverton, where her grandmother taught her to respect nature and to listen to the sounds of the forest. Karen Huie voices that grandmother, and Lila Liu voices the young Mabel. The grown-up Mabel, played by Piper Curda, is a 19-year-old Japanese-American college student. Her estranged parents leave town and her grandmother dies. Mabel keeps watching over the glade anyway.

  Beaverton's mayor, Jerry Generazzo, then announces a freeway that would replace the glade. Jon Hamm voices him as a greedy politician. Jerry claims the animals have already left. Mabel campaigns against the project and finds no allies. Her activism costs her coursework, and her biology professor, Dr. Sam Fairfax, criticizes her for it. Kathy Najimy voices Sam.

  Sam is hiding a secret. With her colleagues Nisha and Conner, voiced by Aparna Nancherla and Sam Richardson, she has built the Hoppers program. The technology lets a human consciousness hop into a robotic animal and live as that species. Sam warns that interfering with wildlife could have disastrous consequences. Mabel sees a chance to save the glade regardless. She takes the robotic beaver body and slips out of the lab.

  Real beavers mistake her for one of their own. Bobby Moynihan voices Mammal King George, an optimistic beaver monarch who shelters displaced animals in a crowded dam. There Mabel finds an artificial tree that emits sound waves only animals can hear. Jerry installed it in secret to drive them away. Mabel destroys the device, and many animals return to the glade. George even asks her to become his advisor.

  Mabel is preparing to reveal who she really is when Jerry blows up the glade with explosives. He installs more sound trees and restarts construction. Her answer is to call together the monarchs of every class of animal.

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• 4. The Animal Council

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  Five classes of animals send rulers to the Animal Council: Insect, Amphibian, Fish, Reptile, and Bird. Isiah Whitlock Jr. voices the goose who serves as Bird King, and Steve Purcell voices the frog who is Amphibian King. Ego Nwodim plays the Fish Queen, and Nichole Sakura plays a trio of snake sisters who rule the reptiles. Meryl Streep voices the Insect Queen, a butterfly who is the most respected and feared member of the council. Her son is a prince named Titus, voiced as an adult by Dave Franco.

  At first the Council does not care. Mabel changes that by presenting the destroyed sound tree and warning that Jerry will eventually go after every habitat. Her speech backfires. The monarchs decide to assassinate Jerry. When Mabel tries to stop them, she accidentally kills the Insect Queen, and she becomes their next target.

  Mabel and George flee while the animals destroy the robotic bodies that Nisha and Conner had hopped into to help the escape. The deception is exposed. Titus crowns himself king and takes control of the Council. George is upset that Mabel undermined his authority. Then she confesses that she feels powerless and isolated, and he agrees to help her protect Jerry.

  With three animal friends, they find the mayor and force him to drive toward the glade using text-to-speech software. Seagulls working for the Council chase them. They try to kill Jerry by dropping a great white shark named Diane onto his car. Vanessa Bayer voices Diane, a shark assassin enlisted by the birds. The group escapes, but Jerry still refuses to give up the freeway. He believes the whole ordeal is Mabel's elaborate attempt to intimidate him.

  Frustrated, Mabel accidentally reveals their location to both the Council and the scientists. The scientists arrive and untether her from the robotic beaver. She faints, and a confused George looks on. She wakes up tied to a chair in Sam's lab, next to Jerry.

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• 5. Fire and Flood

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  A robotic clone of Jerry stands ready in Sam's lab, built by scientists whom the Council has taken hostage. Titus intends to inhabit it and pose as the mayor. His plan is to use the frequencies of the sound trees to massacre the humans gathered for a political rally at the glade. Mabel realizes that her anger has clouded her judgment, and she reconciles with Jerry. He reluctantly hops into the robotic beaver to help the group escape.

  At the rally, Mabel tries to reason with Titus, but he will not abandon the plan. Jerry, the animals, and the scientists try to unhop him. The effort fails and wrecks the robotic beaver. During the struggle, Mabel knocks Jerry's phone onto a sound tree and climbs up to retrieve it. She tears off Titus's robotic face, which stops him from using facial recognition to unlock the phone and trigger the attack.

  Titus tears the tree down and reveals a darker goal: he wants the insects to exterminate every other species. The Council is horrified. The falling tree destroys the robotic body and sparks a wildfire that races across the glade toward the city. The Amphibian King eats Titus. Then the Council joins Mabel, George, and the other animals in taking apart the dam. The released water floods the glade and puts out the fire before it reaches the city.

  Mabel and Jerry settle on a compromise. The freeway is rerouted, and the glade becomes a protected wildlife preserve. Mabel graduates from college. The Hoppers program is discontinued because of what she did, yet Sam hires her as an assistant. She and George can no longer speak aloud, but they stay friends, and George uses text-to-speech software to talk with her.

  A final gag comes in a mid-credits scene. Tom, a lizard who prefers to avoid drama, plays with a bear named Ellen and a beaver named Loaf. Together they toy with Fake Jerry's mask until someone steals it, much to their disappointment.

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• 6. The Lizard That Went Viral

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  In June 2025, a first-look image of the film was shown at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival. Later that month, theaters played a short teaser after the end credits of Pixar's Elio. It showed a small green gecko typing the lizard emoji into a phone, again and again. In August 2025, Pixar revealed that the lizard's name was Tom and that he would appear in the film.

  Tom Lizard quickly went viral and became the subject of many internet memes. Disney reported that the memes earned up to 316 million views. A Tom Lizard mascot appeared at special screenings, promotional events, and televised appearances. He even "photobombed" ESPN's coverage of Super Bowl LX.

  Other brands joined in. Yogurtland offered a limited edition sugar-free frozen yogurt flavor called Mabel's Nutty Adventure. In the game Disney Speedstorm, Mabel became a racer on the 6th of March 2026, during the mid-season of Season 18: Piston Cup. A Fortnite cosmetics bundle with a Tom Lizard skin arrived one day earlier.

  The most unusual tie-in came from a real place. The city of Beaverton, Oregon declared the 5th of March "Hoppers Day" to honor the film's release. Piper Curda and Bobby Moynihan visited as part of the film's world tour on that day. Mayor Lacey Beaty gave the two a handmade wooden key to the city, and the actors gave the city a custom piece of artwork created by Pixar. Beaty also moderated a question-and-answer session between the cast and students from the local school district.

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• 7. Music and Release

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  In August 2025, Pixar announced that Mark Mothersbaugh would compose the score. It was his first composition for a Pixar feature film. He had previously written music for the Toy Story Toons short Hawaiian Vacation (2011) and several Cars Toons shorts. The film also has an original end credits song, "Save the Day," written and performed by SZA and released on the 20th of February 2026.

  On the 23rd of February 2026, Hoppers premiered at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles. It screened at the New York International Children's Film Festival on the 28th of February. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures released it in the United States on the 6th of March. Internationally, the rollout began two days earlier in certain European and Asian countries. It finished on the 26th of March in Australia.

  Some versions changed the voices. In the United Kingdom release, Alan Carr and Amanda Holden voice Alan the Squirrel and Amanda the Spider. In the German dub, Heidi Klum voices the shark Diane, who is renamed Hai-Di.

  Disney and Pixar released the film for digital purchase on the 28th of April 2026. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment planned Ultra HD Blu-ray, Blu-ray, and DVD editions for the 2nd of June, with Disney+ following the next day. By then, the theatrical numbers were already in.

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• 8. Reception

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  Forecasts for the opening weekend, shared with the release of The Bride!, put Hoppers at $40 million from 4,000 theaters. Pixar needed a strong start. Elemental (2023) had opened lukewarm before becoming a sleeper hit, and Elio (2025) became a box-office failure. Hoppers collected $13.2 million on its opening day, including $3.2 million from Thursday previews, which was ahead of expectations.

  The film took first place with $45.3 million in the United States and Canada and $42 million overseas, for a worldwide opening of $88 million. That was the highest opening for an original Pixar film since Coco (2017). It was also the highest opening for an original animated film in the post-pandemic era. Positive word-of-mouth and a slow market for family films helped.

  The second weekend brought $28.7 million, a 37% drop, and first place again. The third weekend fell another 37% to $17.8 million, behind the newcomer Project Hail Mary. The fourth added $12.2 million after a 31% drop. By the fifth weekend, The Drama had pushed Hoppers to fifth place with $5.8 million, down 52%. The final worldwide total was $387 million against a $150 million budget, with $166 million from the United States and Canada and $221 million from other territories. That made it the sixth-highest grossing film of 2026.

  Critics were largely positive, praising the animation, story, and humor. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave it an "A." Nell Minow of RogerEbert.com awarded four stars out of four and called it "Pixar at its very best." Owen Gleiberman of Variety called it "top-drawer Pixar," and David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter praised its "proudly insane universe." Several critics described it as a "return to form" for the studio.

  Not every verdict was glowing. Wilson Chapman of IndieWire gave it a "B+" but felt there was not enough time to deepen the friendship between Mabel and George. Alissa Wilkinson of The New York Times wrote that it was "not as inventive as Inside Out (2015)" and juggled an overcrowded plot, yet she still called it a "fable, really, with a science-nerd edge and some charming animal friends."

  In March 2026, Chong told the Spanish film website Espinof, "I love the idea of a sequel," provided the film was a success. With the box-office numbers above, that condition now looks met.

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