The first of Pixar’s two films this year, “Hoppers,” hits theaters on March 6th. This sci-fi, spy-thriller-influenced nature flick could be considered a major departure for the famed animation studio. While previous Pixar films are plentiful in humor, “Hoppers” is their first truly comedy-first film. Ahead of the film’s release in just over a month, Pixar invited Next Best Picture to the studio to check out “Hoppers,” along with an extensive look behind the scenes at how they brought this hilarious new adventure to life.
Nineteen-year-old Mabel Tanaka (Piper Curda) wants to protect the beautiful glade she used to enjoy with her grandmother. And yet, Mayor Jerry (Jon Hamm) is dead-set on building his new highway project right through it, destroying the pond, tearing out the trees, and losing all the wildlife along with it. But Mabel isn’t letting this go without a fight. Despite protestations from her college professors, Mabel gets hold of crazy new tech they’re working on that lets a human use a robotic animal as an avatar, allowing them to communicate and live among animals, studying them at a deeper level. And yes, “Hoppers” fully owns the “Avatar” comparisons, joking about them right from the start.
“Hoppers” is the brainchild of director Daniel Chong, a former Pixar story artist who left to create “We Bare Bears” on Cartoon Network. Chong joked that, in six years at Cartoon Network, he produced a full series with 4 seasons, 140 episodes, 15 web shorts, and 1 television movie. But in the six years since his return to Pixar, he’s produced…one film. He made it clear that adding to the Pixar canon is no small task. He and the crew spent time getting the story just right. Early on, Chong threw out titles like “Gremlins” and “Men in Black” as inspirations for the style and tone of his Pixar flick.
When he was brought in to direct a film at Pixar, Chong had four goals: he wanted it to be comedy-forward, epic and ambitious in scale, emotionally and thematically relevant, and to star penguins. Inspired by hilarious images of documentary filmmakers using terrible-looking robots disguised as animals to get a better shot, Chong’s initial pitch centered on scientists using “hopping” technology to solve a mystery involving penguins. Pixar CCO Pete Docter squashed that dream right away. “Too many penguin movies,” Chong said. And yet his other three goals lived on intact, especially his desire to make a Pixar film that truly prioritizes big laughs.
So, no penguins. But the other pieces of his idea still worked. As the team researched other animals, they discovered that beavers are a keystone species, one whose dams and ponds will attract hundreds of other species, building an entire thriving community around them. This seemed like the perfect jumping-off point for this story. The team called on beaver expert Dr. Emily Fairfax to consult on the project and help with on-the-ground research to learn more about beavers, their habitats, and the way they interact with the surrounding animal community. Through working with Dr. Fairfax and embarking on research trips to Yellowstone National Park, the filmmakers were able to truly grasp how beavers function as nature’s engineers, creating untold positive environmental impact and drawing a community around them. What animal could be a better storytelling device?
Chong and screenwriter Jesse Andrews found deep emotional resonance by having Mabel transform into a beaver to bring a community together. She encounters a huge cast of amazing characters, like Bobby Moynihan’s King George, who is truly trying his best to get all the animals to live together in harmony, even if he’s a little too naive. With an all-star cast of heavy hitters like Dave Franco, Jon Hamm, Kathy Najimy, Sam Richardson, Melissa Villaseñor, Ego Nwodim, and even Meryl Streep, “Hoppers” has built one of Pixar’s best ensembles ever, all in service of a memorable community. Chong and producer Nicole Grindle also mentioned how much they loved working with the late Isaiah Witlock Jr. in one of his final film roles.
As important as the cast is, if “Hoppers” was going to convince the audience to want to save the glade, it needed to be beautiful. The artists who brought this world to life shared their unique challenges. With so many species, environments, crowds, and textures, this was a beast of a film to animate. Production Designer Bryn Imagire and Visual Effects Supervisor Beth Albright discussed how their teams built the delightful fluff of these beavers, making them lovable yet sturdy enough to be believable. They also developed new techniques to balance realism with stylization, applying real painted textures over their CGI backgrounds. “That paintbrush technique really helped us keep the cinematic quality of the sets,” Imagire describes, “but also got a painterly impression. The softness you get from that is hard in CG because everything is as if you cut it with an exacto-knife.” The gorgeous textures and animation truly help the characters stand out, letting the story and comedy shine.
“It’s very innate, and the reason I did this job was for comedy,” Chong says of finding the right tone for “Hoppers.” “I started off [as a kid] reading comic strips and loving them, copying them, and so comedy was always in the DNA of everything I drew.” And “Hoppers” certainly still has plenty of the classic Pixar heart we know and love, but don’t be surprised if you find yourself laughing much more than you expected when the film comes out this March.
Check out our exclusive podcast interviews with Director Daniel Chong and Producer Nicole Grindle, Production Designer Bryn Imagire and Visual Effects Supervisor Beth Albright, and Character Art Director Anna Scott below.
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