'Zootopia' features such a large and diverse range of characters - one of our biggest casts ever for a Disney Animation film. We needed talented actors who could help bring these animals to life.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
More than just a zoo, the Animal Kingdom is an extraordinary experience of animals, rides and performances. The exhibits have the scale and creativity you associate with Disney. The African safari ride is terrific and worth riding several times.
It's a part of most actors to want to be in an animated feature; to extend the legacy of your career.
One of the magical things about these anthropomorphic animal movies is that we can take things that are so common in our own world that we deal with, like the DMV, or moving to a new city, or our family, and show you a mirror image of those things, reflected in a whole new way. That's why animals are great.
I grew up in a family of filmmakers, so I always wanted to make films about animals, especially comical films. Something about animals amuses me. And they have a great mystery. It's the same mystique some people might feel looking at the stars or the ocean.
I mean when I was working shall we say with Disney, you know they sent me the script for the film Hercules and I had to imagine what all the characters looked like. And to develop those characters, so nothing exists visually when I get the script.
Zoos are becoming facsimiles - or perhaps caricatures - of how animals once were in their natural habitat. If the right policies toward nature were pursued, we would need no zoos at all.
Working with animals is always going to be tough because the animal doesn't know it's an actor.
When I was in college, the first thing we did in acting class was to observe an animal at the zoo and become that animal. So I picked a wallaby.
Just about every actor wants to be a Disney cartoon voice at some point.
For actors in Hollywood, it's very straightforward. We're well-paid animals in a zoo.