ZOOTOPIA

Title : Zootopia

Language : English

Release Date : February 10, 2016 (Belgium)

March 4, 2016 (United States)

Directed By : Byron Howard and Rich Moore

Distributed By : Walt Disney Studios

Motion Pictures

Zootopia is a 2016 American 3D computer-animated comedy-adventure film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It is the 55th Disney animated feature film. The film was directed by Byron Howard and Rich Moore, co-directed by Jared Bush, and stars the voices of Ginnifer Goodwin, Jason Bateman, Idris Elba, Jenny Slate, Nate Torrence, Bonnie Hunt, Don Lake, Tommy Chong, J. K. Simmons, Octavia Spencer, Alan Tudyk, and Shakira. The film details the unlikely partnership between a rabbit police officer and a red fox con artist as they uncover a conspiracy involving the disappearance of savage predator inhabitants of a mammalian metropolis.

Zootopia premiered at the Brussels Animation Film Festival in Belgium on February 13, 2016, and went into general theatrical release in conventional 2D, Disney Digital 3-D, RealD 3D, and IMAX 3D formats in the United States on March 4. The film was internationally acclaimed. It opened to a record-breaking box office success in several countries and earned a worldwide gross of over $1 billion, making it the fourth highest-grossing film of 2016 and the 28th highest-grossing film of all time. The film was chosen by the American Film Institute as one of the top ten films of 2016, and won the Academy Award, Golden Globe, Critics' Choice Movie Award and Annie Award for Best Animated Feature Film, as well as receiving a nomination for the BAFTA Award for Best Animated Film.

Plot

In a world populated by anthropomorphic mammals, Judy Hopps from rural Bunnyburrow fulfills her childhood dream of becoming a police officer in urban Zootopia. Despite being the academy valedictorian, Judy is delegated to parking duty by Chief Bogo, who doubts her potential because she is a rabbit. On her first day, she is hustled by a con artist fox duo, Nick Wilde and Finnick.

The next day, Judy abandons parking duty to arrest Duke Weaselton, a weasel who stole a bag of crocus bulbs known as Midnicampum holicithias. Bogo reprimands her, but Mrs. Otterton enters Bogo's office pleading for someone to find her husband Emmitt, one of fourteen predators who are missing. When Judy volunteers and Assistant Mayor Dawn Bellwether praises the assignment, Bogo gives her 48 hours to find Otterton on the condition that she resigns if she fails.

After determining Nick was a suspect seen in Otterton's last known sighting, Judy blackmails him into assisting her by covertly recording his confession to tax evasion with her carrot pen. They track Otterton to a limousine owned by crime boss Mr. Big, who reveals Otterton went "savage" – reverted to a feral state – and attacked his chauffeur Manchas. At his home, Manchas mentions Otterton yelled about "night howlers" before the attack. Moments later, Manchas himself turns savage and chases the pair. Judy saves Nick by trapping Manchas and calls the ZPD for help, but when they arrive, Manchas has vanished. Bogo demands Judy's resignation, but Nick reminds Bogo that Judy still has ten hours to solve the case. Judy learns from Nick that he was bullied as a child when he tried to join the Ranger Scouts, who stereotyped him as untrustworthy for being a fox.

At City Hall, Bellwether offers Judy and Nick access to the city's traffic cameras. They discover Manchas was captured by wolves, who Judy surmises are the "night howlers". They locate the missing predators - all gone savage - imprisoned at Cliffside Asylum, where Mayor Leodore Lionheart hides them from the public while a scientist tries to determine the cause of their behavior. Lionheart and those involved are arrested for false imprisonment and Bellwether becomes the new mayor.

Judy, praised for solving the case, has become friends with Nick and asks him to join the ZPD as her partner. However, she upsets him at a press conference by suggesting a predatory biological cause for the recent savage behavior, and her comments cause tension between predators and prey throughout the city. Feeling guilty for the results of her words, Judy quits her job.

Back in Bunnyburrow, Judy learns that the night howlers are actually toxic flowers that have severe psychotropic effects on mammals. After returning to Zootopia and reconciling with Nick, the pair confront Weaselton, who tells them the bulbs he stole were for a ram named Doug. They find Doug in a laboratory hidden in the city subway, developing a drug made from night howlers, which he has been shooting at predators with a dart gun.

Judy and Nick obtain the serum as evidence, but before they can reach the ZPD, Bellwether confronts them in the Natural History Museum and takes the evidence, revealing herself as the mastermind behind a prey-supremacist conspiracy. Judy and Nick are trapped after Nick refuses to abandon an injured Judy. Bellwether shoots a serum pellet at Nick to make him kill Judy, and summons the ZPD for help, but Judy and Nick have replaced the serum pellets in Bellwether's gun with blueberries. Enraged, Bellwether threatens to frame the pair for the attacks, but Judy has recorded Bellwether's confession. Bogo and the ZPD arrive and Bellwether is arrested.

Lionheart publicly denies knowledge of Bellwether's plot and states that his imprisonment of the savage predators was a "wrong thing for the right reason". With the cause of the epidemic identified, the savage animals are cured and Judy rejoins the ZPD. Nick graduates from the Zootopia Police Academy as the city's first fox police officer and becomes Judy's partner.