Hoppers: 5 Things We Learned, Straight From Our Pixar Visit

When Pixar emerged onto the feature film scene with "Toy Story" in 1995, the company solidified itself as the home for advantageous, creatively-driven animation. They were determined to push the medium forward while telling some of the best stories in cinema history in the process. However, around the 2010s, as the entertainment industry began to prioritize franchises above all else, Pixar also started to release sequels and prequels to previous hits.

The 2020s saw a course correction with original films like "Onward," "Soul," "Luca," and "Turning Red," but thanks to COVID-19, the films weren't given the theatrical treatment they so deserved. Recent films like "Elemental" and "Inside Out 2" were both smash hits at the box office, but despite nabbing an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature, "Elio" was an unfortunate financial flop. "Elio" was one of the few original stories announced to be coming down the Pixar pipeline in the next few years, with the other original film, "Hoppers," heading our way in March.

When scientists discover a way to transfer human consciousness into robotic animals, a teenage environmentalist named Mabel (Piper Curda) uses the new technology to uncover mysteries of the animal world while inhabiting the form of a beaver. I was recently invited to visit the Pixar campus on behalf of /Film to see a preview of the film and learn more about how it came to life, and I can say with the utmost authority that "Hoppers" deserves to be Pixar's next massive hit. Heartfelt, hilarious, and instantly memorable, "Hoppers" perfectly captures the magic of Pixar, and director Daniel Chong ("We Bare Bears") has delivered arguably the funniest movie under the company's banner. Here are five things you need to know.

When Daniel Chong was first concocting "Hoppers," he was inspired by the camouflaged robot devices scientists often use to research animals, including the roving penguin cameras that essentially look like a camera hidden inside a penguin stuffed animal on top of a remote-controlled car. They're equal parts adorable and ridiculous when perceived by human eyes, but these hidden cameras are a huge help for scientists looking to observe a notoriously shy species. "I had this fixation with penguins for some inexplicable reason, and was determined to make the movie about them," Chong told us. "But Pete [Docter, CCO of Pixar] didn't feel the world needed another penguin movie." Considering the animated medium alone already boasts multiple penguin-centric franchises, including "Happy Feet," "Surf's Up," and "Penguins of Madagascar," Docter had a point. (Not to mention the myriad live-action penguin films like "Mr. Popper's Penguins" and high-profile nature documentaries like "March of the Penguins.")

"He was right, of course," Chong explained through laughter. Fortunately, getting a no-go on penguins helped guide Chong into a more interesting direction. "As I continued to develop the idea, I came across a story about how Yellowstone National Park had rewilded their ecosystems with wolves after they had all disappeared," he said. "Their reintroduction began to rebalance things — leading to other animals returning, including beavers. And once beavers returned and built their dams and ponds, a giant wealth of animals and plants returned."

Beavers are often referred to as "ecosystem engineers," and are a vital part of keeping our environment healthy. It was then that Chong realized that "Hoppers" needed to be about beavers, and the associated animals that flourish in beaver-centric ecosystems.

The idea of human beings being able to transfer their consciousness into a different form has been a popular subject in science fiction for nearly 100 years, with John S. Campbell's 1930 novella "The Infinite Brain" serving as a cautionary tale for the dangers of giving your consciousness over to a mechanical, artificial brain. But when the first teaser trailer for "Hoppers" arrived, contemporary movie fans immediately drew parallels to James Cameron's "Avatar" series, where human beings control Na'vi-human hybrid bodies called "avatars" to explore the planet Pandora. Considering "Hoppers" is about a teenage girl inhabiting a beaver robot to explore their environment, the comparison was inevitable — so much so that Pixar knew not to fight it and had the characters acknowledge the similarities within the universe of the film. 

When Mabel first learns what Dr. Sam (Kathy Najimy), Nisha (Aparna Nancherla), and Conner (Sam Richardson) are up to with the beaver bots, she says to them, "Guys, this is like 'Avatar,'" triggering Dr. Sam to defensively reply, "THIS IS NOTHING LIKE 'AVATAR!'" It's a perfect joke to include in the trailer, and one of the best examples of the type of humor "Hoppers" is bringing to the table.

Director Daniel Chong knew it too, which is why he told us that Piper Curda was asked to provide over 80 takes on the line as Mabel until they found the perfect balance of casual acknowledgement that still sparks a huge laugh. "The thing that always guided us was the comedy and the characters," Chong explained. "That was what we chased the hardest. We knew it was our team's strong suit, and we made sure early on to establish a unique comedic tone with fun characters to build everything on."

Some of the most beautiful depictions of nature have come from hand-drawn, 2D animation, but replicating that same feeling in CG is incredibly difficult. "If you take a picture outside, it's quite busy — there's a lot of information, a lot of visual noise," director Daniel Chong said. "How do you calm down nature and depict it in a way that looks beautiful and recognizable but isn't distracting?" According to visual effects supervisor Beth Albright, the challenge was to depict cohesion between the environments and the characters, while still staying true to the film's absurdist comedy/spy thriller/science-fiction tone.

To find the balance, the lighting and effects artists developed a new, custom paintbrush workflow tool that allowed them to put brushstrokes on their models and simplify the backgrounds without losing the rich texture of the environments. For roughly three weeks, every department took a timeout sprint to create new visuals that they'd always wanted to try. "From there," Albright continued, "we were able to create a brand new pipeline that could take each individual leaf, turn it into a point, and then replace it with a painted brushstroke. [...] We were able to simplify some of the visual detail without blurring it out or putting a bunch of atmosphere and mist in front of it, which meant we could maintain silhouettes on our characters that were soft and tactile, but clear and expressive."

This allowed a softening of natural backgrounds that allowed characters to pop, but without the realistic feeling of nature being lost. This approach extended to other complicated factors like beaver habitats, depictions of the elements, and figuring out how to have nighttime scenes still resemble a comedy and never cross over into the realm of frightful.

In typical Pixar fashion, the voice cast of "Hoppers" is ridiculously stacked, including Piper Curda (Mabel), Bobby Moynihan (King George), Jon Hamm (Mayor Jerry Generazzo), Kathy Najimy (Dr. Sam), Dave Franco (Titus), Eduardo Franco (Loaf), Aparna Nancherla (Nisha), Tom Law (Tom Lizard), Sam Richardson (Conner), Melissa Villaseñor (Ellen), the late Isiah Whitlock Jr. (Bird King), Steve Purcell (Amphibian King), Ego Nwodim (Fish Queen), Nichole Sakura (Reptile Queens), Meryl Streep (Insect Queen), Karen Huie (Grandma Tanaka), and Vanessa Bayer (Diane). Daniel Chong shared a fantastic story about asking if the legendary Meryl Streep if she'd be down to voice the Insect Queen, which inspired me to ask him what it was like to approach actors about joining the film to voice animals that might be less-than-ideal comparisons to their personality.

"I mean, the weird thing is, sometimes they immediately had some weird kinship with that animal," Daniel Chong told me during our exclusive interview. "For example, I remember Nichole Sakura, who plays the Reptile Queens, she was like, 'I have all these snake tattoos!'" In fact, Meryl Streep even expressed a kinship with beavers, and during their Zoom call about the role, pointed out a pond on her property that was inhabited by beavers. "There was just something that all of them sort of just immediately had an alignment with already, and it just kind of worked out very naturally," Chong explained.

And if the actors didn't have an outright connection with the animal, they picked up on the vibe. "I don't know that Eduardo Franco had a kinship with beavers per se, but the attitude of Loaf? He just nailed that out of the gate," producer Nicole Grindle told me. "We're like, 'Yep, that's Loaf.' He got it."

Beavers are having a moment, and if there's one thing potential "Hoppers" viewers need to know, it's that everyone is going to walk out of that theater invested in the role they play in our ecosystem. "Beavers are a keystone species that can sustain wildlife in the most unique way, and it became very obvious that they would be the perfect vessels for the movie to tell this story. They are also super cute and round!" Daniel Chong added. "In our research, we also noticed that people are starting to recognize what beavers can do — and their impact on their habitats — by just doing their thing, and it's remarkable. These little guys deserve to be stars."

Dr. Emily Fairfax, an ecohydrologist, beaver researcher, and assistant professor of geography at the University of Minnesota, was consulted for "Hoppers" and assisted the team with their educational research to ensure beavers were being presented accurately. "It was really important to me that the folks at Pixar cared so deeply," she explained. "I care a lot about science communication and about sharing all the amazing things that beavers do. There is no way I could reach as many people through a peer-reviewed paper as will be reached through this movie."

This newfound appreciation expanded to the team as well. "What they've done to build ecosystems and then to protect natural areas from wildfires, I mean, that alone was something that blew my mind," Nicole Grindle told me. "[I love] that other animals live in their lodges, that they are safe ... even snakes! I mean, I never knew that, and there's just something metaphorical about that in the story that is so heartwarming. If we could all live that way, right?"

"Hoppers" arrives in theaters on March 6, 2026.