The Zootropolis 2 team on bringing reptiles into the Disney sequel, and why new character Gary De'Snake is the movie's Yoda

Nine years after the release of the first Zootropolis movie, which grossed over $1 billion at the box office and won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature, Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde are back for another adventure.

The film picks up just one week after the events of the first movie, which saw the unlikely fox and bunny duo bust open an anti-predator conspiracy. Now, Nick and Judy are bona fide partners on the ZPD, but it's not all smooth sailing. While they might have saved the day once before, there are still some teething problems in their newly minted partnership, and the biggest challenge the duo faces is learning how they can work together.

"It seems like a natural progression," Jason Bateman, who voices Nick, tells GamesRadar+ when we meet with the cast and filmmakers in London. "Plus, see any cop buddy movie, it's usually one's playing by the rules, and the other one likes to work outside the lines. There's a pleasant predictability to those two-handers."

This time around, though, Nick and Judy are joined by a newcomer: Gary De'Snake, a surprisingly friendly reptile voiced by Loki season 2 star Ke Huy Quan. "My first instinct was, 'Oh, he's a venomous pit viper. He must be the villain,'" Quan tells us. "And I didn't think my voice sounds scary at all! But when I found out that he's actually this friendly, goofy guy with a big heart, I loved him right away, and I couldn't wait to voice him."

Reptiles were nowhere to be seen in the first Zootropolis movie, but, as co-director (and Walt Disney Animation Studios chief creative officer) Jared Bush tells us, the decision to add them – and a host of aquatic critters like sea lions and walruses, too – arose directly from expanding on the world built by the original movie.

"In the first film, we talked a lot about bias and stereotype, and predator and prey. In a mammal world, those lines are very clear. In a reptile world, not so much," he explains. "So, we couldn't bring reptiles into the first story, but my directing partner, Byron Howard, and I always thought that reptiles were somewhere. We always talked about Zootropolis as one city on one continent of one planet of animals. So we said, 'They're out here somewhere.'"

Partners in crime

To make this sequel, Bush looked at follow-ups he loved for inspiration. "Sequels are really difficult, because there's the audience's expectations, and you want to try to meet or exceed those expectations, but it also can't feel so different that people are confused," he explains. "And so I looked to a lot of movies that, for me, resonated."

One of those movies was a particularly legendary sequel. "Of course, Empire Strikes Back. To me, it was a great, 'Why did that work?' And really looking at it, you're learning more about the characters," says Bush. "You're also bringing in new characters that feel like they've always been there. So, that was Yoda for Empire Strikes Back. We now have Gary, and Gary feels like a character, of course, he's in this world, and he should have always been in that world, right? But it's the first time you're meeting him, and it feels so important, but really tied to your character journey."

Gary the loveable snake is embroiled in another city-spanning conspiracy that Nick and Judy will have to untangle – if they can work through those partnership teething problems, that is. "For this story, we wanted to make it about Nick and Judy and their partnership, and the fact that they're very different. Not only the fact that one's a rabbit, one's a fox: they see the world differently," says Bush. "We wanted to pair the story of their differences with our larger mystery. And so the idea that we'd bring in reptiles – very different than mammals – really made sense for us, and we wanted to do it with, frankly, a reptile that would make people the most nervous, so we could flip that trope. And you meet Gary, and he's the sweetest character in the world."

Indeed, just like with the original movie, while the city is bustling with all types of creatures and the mystery of the central case has huge implications for the world of Zootropolis, the heart of this film is firmly Nick and Judy's odd partnership. "It is a very cool thing seeing Nick and Judy get along and fight and come back together and figure out what their little dynamic is," says Bateman. "My character, you know, typical dude, he doesn't really know what to do with his feelings, and how they have anything to do with how he can make things better in his life… Like any dude, he needs a good dudette to help figure things out."

Naturally, a hurdle to creating that duo dynamic behind the scenes is that Bateman and Judy voice actor Ginnifer Goodwin recorded separately. "Usually you've got that other actor with you, and you can kind of sense, 'Okay, they're black and I'm white.' You calibrate based on [that]. But not ever recording together, it was really just a stab in the dark. And the director really helped us figure out what the Yin would be to the Yang," says Bateman.

Since this is a sequel, though, the actors already had a solid foundation to build on. "I felt like we had source material for this one," says Goodwin. "Like the first one, talk about it being a stab in the dark, I really felt blindfolded the whole time. Because the first one, I didn't ever read a script, and I felt like I really was shadow boxing, and then I understood after making the first one, 'That's who the character is.' I felt like I had that as a base for this one, so as an actress, I felt braver."

Of course, with so much work going into developing Nick and Judy's partnership in Zootropolis 2, it would be a shame to leave things here… and, without spoiling anything, the sequel leaves the book open for more. "The world of Zootropolis is a city that is part of a continent that is in a world. So when you look at it that way, I think there are hundreds of stories that could be told, just like in our world," says producer Yvett Merino. "There are thousands and thousands of stories that could be told." Here's hoping Nick and Judy have more adventures left in them.

Zootropolis 2 arrives in UK cinemas this November 28, and it's currently playing in US theaters (titled Zootopia 2). See what else is in store with our guide to all the upcoming Disney movies.