With Big Hero 6 **going great guns at the American box office, it’s almost surprising to learn that Disney – or at least, Disney Feature Animation – is taking 2015 off (though the company is making room for two movies from sister studio Pixar). Still, 2016 promises not one but two films from the Mouse House’s team with the already announced Moana and now **Zootopia{
Admittedly, both films have technically been unveiled – news of Little Mermaid duo Ron Clements and John Musker working on Moana arrived late last month and Zootopia**’s existence was announced back at last year’s D23 event. But now we know when they’ll be arriving, at least in the US (UK dates for Disney ‘toons often tend to be set later: we won’t get Big Hero 6 until January 30).
Zootopia, which comes from Tangled director Byron Howard, is described as a buddy-comedy-meets-conspiracy-thriller set in a world entirely populated by animals. Our main characters are smooth Fox Nick Wilde and cop rabbit Lt. Judy Hops. Usually in animal movies, people just make them all human and give them human abilities,” Howard said during the big Disney event, “but we wanted to bring the animal abilities into the movie. In the same way we pushed human animation in Tangled, we want to show an animal movie the way no-one has seen before. Animals in our world are beautiful and amazing and we wanted to capture that and tie it to what we are as humans.” The film is now set for a US date of March 4, 2016, where it faces competition from Tim Burton’s new film, Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children.
Moana, as you may already know, follows the titular adventurous teenage heroine, who sets out on a seemingly impossible mission to fulfil her ancestors’ quest. Born in the ancient South Pacific locale of Oceania, the natural navigator is making it her mission to find a fabled island. On her journey, she’ll join forces with her hero, demi-god Maui and must brave all manner of challenges including giant sea creatures as she tries to reach her destination. It’ll make landfall on November 23, 2016.