As previously announced, Tangled director Byron Howard's next animation for Disney is Zootropolis (at least here in the UK; Zootopia everywhere else). A buddy-comedy-meets-conspiracy-thriller set in a world entirely populated by animals, it's now just announced its impressive voice cast. Idris Elba, J.K. Simmons, Jason Bateman, Ginnifer Goodwin, Octavia Spencer, Tommy Chong, Nate Torrence and Alan Tudyk will all be rocking the mic for the menagerie.
Our main characters are smooth Fox Nick Wilde (Bateman) and cop rabbit Lt. Judy Hopps (Goodwin). Elba is Chief Bogo (a bull); Simmons is Mayor Leodore Lionheart (a lion); Chong (of Cheech &) is hippy yak Yax; Spencer is Mrs Otterton (an otter); Torrence is cheetah Benjamin Clawhauser; and Tudyk is small-time weasel crook Duke Weaselton.
“Usually in animal movies, people just make them all human and give them human abilities,” Howard said at Disney’s D23 event back in 2013, “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.”
Zootropolis will be out here on March 25, 2016, following its March 4 US arrival.