Hoppers (film)

Hoppers is a 2026 American animated science fiction comedy film^[4] produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. Directed by Daniel Chong and written by Jesse Andrews from a story by Chong and Andrews, the film stars the voices of Piper Curda, Bobby Moynihan, Jon Hamm, Kathy Najimy, and Dave Franco. The plot follows Mabel Tanaka (Curda), an animal lover, whose mind is transferred into a lifelike robotic beaver to communicate with animals and save their habitat from human destruction, inadvertently starting an uprising in doing so.

Chong began working on a new original film at Pixar in December 2020, after returning to the studio. The film was first officially announced as Hoppers in August 2024, along with Curda, Moynihan, and Hamm revealed as part of the cast. Development on the film lasted for six years. Mark Mothersbaugh composed the score, and SZA wrote and performed the end credits song "Save the Day".

Hoppers premiered at the El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles on February 23, 2026, and was released in the United States on March 6. The film received positive reviews from critics^[2] and has grossed $177.5 million worldwide, becoming the fifth highest-grossing film of 2026.

In the city of Beaverton, Mabel Tanaka spends her childhood with her grandmother in a nearby forest glade inhabited by many wild animals, particularly a colony of beavers. Inspired by her grandmother, Mabel grows up with a deep appreciation for nature and continues watching over the glade after her grandmother's death. When Beaverton's mayor, Jerry Generazzo, announces plans to replace the glade with a freeway, Mabel campaigns against the project but receives no support. Her activism causes her to neglect her college studies, to the disapproval of her biology professor, Dr. Sam Fairfax.

While trying to lure beavers back to the glade, Mabel discovers that Sam and her colleagues have secretly developed a new technology designed to enhance wildlife research. Known as the "Hoppers" program, it allows a human consciousness to "hop" into a robotic animal and experience life as that species. Seeing an opportunity to save the glade, Mabel hops into a robotic beaver against Sam's wishes and flees the lab.

Believed by the animals to be a real beaver, Mabel is brought before Mammal King George, a beaver monarch who houses the glade's displaced animal residents in a massive dam. Mabel discovers an artificial tree emitting sound waves audible only to animals that Jerry secretly installed to drive them away, and destroys it, causing George's subjects to begin returning to the glade. Mabel grows closer to George, who shares his past and eventually asks her to serve as his personal advisor. Mabel is about to reveal her true identity to George when the animals are driven back to the dam by Jerry, who has installed more sound trees and resumed construction.

Mabel and George arrange a meeting with the Animal Council in the dam, attended by monarchs representing the Insect, Amphibian, Fish, Reptile, and Bird classes, with George representing the mammals. Mabel inadvertently persuades the Council to assassinate Jerry. In trying to stop them, she accidentally kills the Insect Queen, making herself their next target, and she and George flee. Although initially upset that Mabel undermined his authority, George agrees to help her protect Jerry after she confesses that she feels powerless. With the help of some other animals Mabel befriended, she and George locate Jerry and force him to drive to the glade, but the Council, now led by Insect King Titus, who has succeeded his mother, pursues them, attempting to kill Jerry by dropping a shark named Diane onto his car. They narrowly escape, but Sam arrives and untethers Mabel from the robotic beaver, leaving George confused and saddened.

The Council raids Sam's lab, ties up Mabel and Jerry, and forces the scientists to build a robotic clone of Jerry for Titus to hop into. Titus plans to impersonate the mayor and use the frequencies of the noise trees to destroy the brains of the humans attending a political rally at the glade. Realizing that her anger had clouded her judgment, Mabel reconciles with Jerry, who reluctantly hops into the robotic beaver to free them both. Mabel attempts to reason with Titus at the rally, but the latter refuses, so the animals and scientists try to unhop Titus, which fails. Mabel struggles to take the phone from the robotic Jerry's hands and it lands on top of a sound tree. While retrieving it, the robot's face comes off, rendering Titus unable to use facial recognition to unlock Jerry's phone and carry out his plan. He tears down the tree, revealing his ambition for insects to rule over all animals, shocking the Council. The robot body explodes, igniting a wildfire that consumes the glade and spreads toward the city. After Titus is eaten by the Amphibian King, the redeemed Council joins Mabel, George, and the glade animals to dismantle the dam, causing a flood that extinguishes the fire.

As Mabel and Jerry reach an understanding, the freeway is rerouted and the glade is restored as a protected wildlife preserve. Mabel graduates from college, and although the Hoppers program is discontinued, she is hired as Sam's assistant. Though they can no longer communicate verbally, Mabel and George remain friends, with the latter using text-to-speech software to communicate with her.

• Piper Curda as Mabel Tanaka, a 19-year-old animal-loving Japanese-American college student whose mind is transferred into a robotic beaver^[5][6][7][8]
  • Lila Liu as young Mabel^[9]
• Bobby Moynihan as King George, an optimistic beaver monarch and the Mammal King^[5][6][7]
• Jon Hamm as Jerry Generazzo, a greedy mayor^{[5][6][7][10]}
• Kathy Najimy as Dr. Samantha "Sam" Fairfax,^[11] Mabel's biology professor who created the hopping technology^[10]
• Dave Franco as Titus, the Insect King,^[11] a butterfly and the Insect Queen's son^[10]
  • Eman Abdul-Razzak as Young Titus (Insect Prince), a caterpillar^[12]
• Eduardo Franco as Loaf,^[11] a slow yet staunch beaver^[10]
• Aparna Nancherla as Nisha,^[11] Dr. Sam's astute colleague^[10]
• Tom Law as Tom Lizard,^[11] a lizard who prefers to avoid drama^[10]
• Sam Richardson as Conner,^[11] a graduate student working under Dr. Sam^[10]
• Melissa Villaseñor as Ellen,^[11] a big, menacing, mostly grumpy brown bear always on the lookout for her next meal^[10]
• Isiah Whitlock Jr. as Bird King,^[11] a goose monarch^[10]
• Steve Purcell as Amphibian King,^[11] a frog monarch^[10]
• Ego Nwodim as Fish Queen,^[11] a fish monarch^[10]
• Nichole Sakura as Reptile Queens,^[11] a trio of snake sister monarchs^[10]
• Meryl Streep as Insect Queen, a butterfly monarch who is the most respected and feared member of the all-seeing and all-powerful Animal Council and the mother of Titus ^[13][11][10]
• Vanessa Bayer as Diane,^[11] a shark assassin^[10]
  • Heidi Klum voices Diane (renamed to Hai-Di the Shark) in the German dub of the film^[14]
• Demetri Martin as flock of birds^[15]
• Joe Spano as an elderly Beavertonian
• Eric Edelstein as an additional voice^[16]
• Lori Alan as Mabel's mother^[17]
• Karen Huie as Grandma Tanaka, Mabel's elderly grandmother who teaches Mabel to respect nature and to listen to the sounds of the forest.

In the United Kingdom release, Alan Carr and Amanda Holden voice Alan the Squirrel and Amanda the Spider, respectively.^[18]

In December 2020, Daniel Chong revealed on Twitter that he had returned to Pixar following the completion of his Cartoon Network television series We Bare Bears (2015–2019) and the release of We Bare Bears: The Movie (2020) and that he was developing an original feature film.^[19] At the D23 fan event in August 2024, Pixar's chief creative officer Pete Docter announced that the film would be titled Hoppers.^[5][6][7] Shortly after, Jesse Andrews (writer of Luca) revealed on his Twitter account that he had been working on the film for three years.^[20] As part of the film's announcement at the D23 event, Piper Curda, Bobby Moynihan, and Jon Hamm were revealed to be part of the voice cast.^[5][6][7] Development on Hoppers lasted for six years.^[21]

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 are Avatar influences, [...] But there's also this Mission Impossible spy-thriller quality to the movie too, because Mabel's kind of infiltrating the animal world."^[22]

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.'"^[23]

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 of environmentalism."^[24] However, in a July 2025 interview with Screen 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."^[23]

In August 2025, it was announced that Mark Mothersbaugh would compose the film's score, marking his first composition for a Pixar feature film after composing for the Toy Story Toons short Hawaiian Vacation and several Cars Toons shorts for the studio.^[25] In addition, the film features an original end credits song written and performed by SZA titled "Save the Day", which was released on February 20, 2026.^[26]

Hoppers premiered at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles on February 23, 2026,^[27] and was screened at the New York International Children's Film Festival on February 28, 2026,^[28] which was then followed by a theatrical release in the United States by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures on March 6, 2026.^[29] Internationally, the film began its rollout two days earlier in certain European and Asian countries, with the latest release date scheduled for March 26 in Australia.^[3]

A first-look image of the film was publicly shown at the 2025 Annecy International Animation Film Festival in June 2025.^[30] Later that month a short teaser, featuring a lizard repeatedly typing the lizard emoji into a phone, played in theaters after the end credits of Pixar's Elio.^[31][32] In August 2025, Pixar revealed that the lizard's name is Tom and that he would appear in the film.^[33]

Yogurtland promoted the film with a limited edition sugar-free frozen yogurt flavor known as Mabel's Nutty Adventure.^[34]

In the month of the release of the film, the free-to-play kart racing game Disney Speedstorm introduced Mabel as a racer; she was added to the game on March 6 during the mid-season of Season 18: Piston Cup.^[35] Likewise, a cosmetics bundle for Fortnite, including a Tom Lizard skin, was released one day earlier.^[36]

The city of Beaverton, Oregon declared March 5 "Hoppers Day" in honor of the film's release.^[37] Piper Curda and Bobby Moynihan visited the city as part of the film's world tour on March 5, 2026. During the proclamation ceremony, Mayor Lacey Beaty presented the two cast members with a handmade wooden key to the city. In exchange, the actors gifted the city a custom piece of artwork created by Pixar. In addition, Beaty moderated a Q&A between the cast and students from the local school district.^[38]

As of March 18, 2026, Hoppers has grossed $99.4 million in the United States and Canada and $78.1 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $177.5 million.^[3]

In the United States and Canada, Hoppers was released alongside The Bride!, and was projected to gross $40 million from 4,000 theaters during its opening weekend. The film was projected to reverse Pixar's low opening streak for its originals, overtaking the lukewarm openings of Elemental (2023), which became a sleeper hit, and Elio (2025), which became a box-office failure.^[39][40] The film collected $13.2 million on its opening day, including $3.2 million from Thursday previews, which was seen as ahead of expectations.^[41][42] The film proceeded to open to $46 million in the US and Canada and $42 million overseas for a worldwide total of $88 million, taking first place at the box office.^[43] In doing so, Hoppers became the highest opening for an original Pixar film since Coco (2017), and the highest opening for an original animated film in the post-pandemic era.^[39] The better-than-average performance was attributed through positive word-of-mouth and the film's release during a slow market for family films.^[44]

In its second weekend, the film grossed $28.5 million, remaining in first, dropping 37%.^[45]

Hoppers received positive reviews, with critics praising its animation, story, and humor.^[2] On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 93% of 192 critics' reviews are positive. The website's consensus reads: "An eager beaver for endearment that has the charm to back it up, Hoppers is a sprightly riot that might just be the funniest entry in the Pixar canon yet."^[46] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 73 out of 100, based on 45 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.^[47] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.^[48]

Several critics called the film a "return to form" for Pixar.^[49] Nell Minow from RogerEbert.com gave the film 4 stars out of 4, saying the film is "Pixar at its very best. It has charm and a touch of magic but it is grounded—literally."^[50] Wilson Chapman of IndieWire gave it a "B+", stating that "there's not enough time to deepen the sweet friendship between Mabel and George into something as powerful as, say, Marlin and Dory in Finding Nemo. Still, what we do get is pretty uniformly delightful."^[51] William Bibbiani of TheWrap felt that "Hoppers isn't just James Cameron's Avatar if it had feelings, it's also James Cameron's Avatar if it was good."^[52]

• Official website
• Hoppers at IMDb