What do you do when a community of beavers is cluelessly, directly in the development path of a proposed highway, and you have to move them, but they just won’t listen to you? The answer is obvious…you gotta become a beaver yourself! Hoppers is Pixar Animation Studios’ next feature film, and today we got our first real look at it.
Here’s why it’s called that: the human-to-beaver technology is called “hopping.” Mabel, the protagonist, asks the science team that invented the tech if it’s like Avatar. That pushes their buttons: “IT’S NOTHING LIKE AVATAR!” But it’s totally like Avatar, which we guess Pixar can steal freely now that the franchise is under the Disney umbrella. And it’s also not: it’s much sillier than a Cameron film.
The highway subplot has been completely left out of the first trailer — it’s just Mabel getting used to her new beaver body and her awe at being able to understand animal languages. There’s a lot of culture shock here…Mabel doesn’t comprehend the concept of “pond rules,” a gag we won’t spoil.
Based on what we see here alone, we have higher hopes for Hoppers than we had for Elio, Pixar’s latest that, as we all know by now, didn’t do so well. While both films use science fiction premises, Hoppers just feels a lot more…FUN, and that sense of fun is communicated more effectively. But what else would you expect from Daniel Chong, creator of We Bare Bears? His offbeat style of humor is all over the place here.
“In Hoppers, the question we’re answering is: ‘What if we could understand and communicate with the animal world?’ says Chong. “Our main character, Mabel, gets to discover the animal kingdom as an animal, which can be weird and often hilarious. Mabel undercover in the animal world leads to a wild, roller coaster ride of a movie, with all the heart you expect from a classic Pixar film. It’s going to be so much fun to watch in the theater; I can’t wait for everyone to see it.”
Hoppers will be released in theaters March 6, 2026.
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