| Hoppers | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Daniel Chong |
| Screenplay by | Jesse Andrews |
| Produced by | Nicole Paradis Grindle |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography |
|
| Edited by | Axel Geddes |
| Music by | Mark Mothersbaugh |
Production company | |
| Distributed by | Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures[a] |
Release date |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Hoppers is an upcoming American animatedscience fictioncomedy film produced byPixar Animation Studios forWalt Disney Pictures. Directed byDaniel Chong from a screenplay byJesse Andrews, the film stars the voices ofPiper Curda,Bobby Moynihan andJon Hamm. It follows an animal lover named Mabel whose mind is transferred into a robotic beaver in order to communicate with animals and save their habitat from destruction.
Chong began working on a new original film at Pixar in December 2020. The film was first officially announced asHoppers in August 2024, along with Curda, Moynihan, and Hamm revealed as part of the cast.
Hoppers is scheduled to be released in theaters in the United States on March 6, 2026.
After a group of scientists invent a way to "hop" human minds into lifelike robotic animal bodies, a girl named Mabel uses their technology to embody a robotic beaver and thwart a construction company's plot to destroy the local animal habitat.[1][2]
In December 2020,Daniel Chong revealed onTwitter that he had returned toPixar following the completion of hisCartoon Network television seriesWe Bare Bears (2015–2019) and the release ofWe Bare Bears: The Movie (2020) and that he was working on an original feature film.[11] At theD23 fan event in August 2024, Pixar's chief creative officerPete Docter announced that the film would be titledHoppers.[3][4][5] Shortly after,Jesse Andrews revealed on his X (Twitter) account that he had been working on the film for three years.[12] As part of the film's announcement at the D23 event,Piper Curda,Bobby Moynihan, andJon Hamm were revealed to be part of the voice cast.[3][4][5]
In an interview with D23, Chong said that one of his inspirations for the film were the nature documentaries in which robot animals are placed in the animal world; "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 additionally stated, "obviously there areAvatar influences, [...] But there's also thisMission Impossible spy-thriller quality to the movie too, because Mabel's kind of infiltrating the animal world."[13]
Chong initially pitched the film with penguin protagonists. However Docter disapproved, arguing that penguins had been protagonists in several other animated films, so Chong changed the protagonists to beavers after doing research on how they affect the environment; "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.'"[14]
In December 2024,The Hollywood Reporter stated that, according to a former Pixar artist, the filmmakers were told to "downplay" the film's "planned message ofenvironmentalism."[15] However, in a July 2025 interview withScreen Rant, Chong denied that the film's themes were censored, stating, "If anything, I felt a lot of alignment. [...] The honest truth about the process, though, is that every movie here goes through so much iteration and changes a lot, and I can see, maybe, to some other people's eyes within the studio, [how] they might see [that] it looks like things are being censored. But, really, [the movie is] just going through its natural course of iteration and stuff–at least for our movie."[14]
In August 2025, it was announced thatMark Mothersbaugh would compose the film's score, marking his first composition for a Pixar feature film after composing several short films for the studio.[16]
Hoppers is scheduled to be theatrically released in the United States byWalt Disney Pictures on March 6, 2026.[17]
A first-look image of the film was publicly shown at the2025 Annecy International Animation Film Festival in June 2025.[18] Later that month a short teaser, featuring a lizard repeatedly typing the lizard emoji into a phone, played in theaters after theend credits of Pixar'sElio.[19][20] In August 2025, Pixar revealed that the lizard's name is Tom and that he would appear in the film.[21]
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