Zootopia 2 director says the original animation was almost very different: "That movie was almost like a James Bond adventure on an island"

While Zootopia 2 keeps getting closer to breaking into the list of ten highest grossing movies of all time, we just found out that Disney's original animated movie could have looked very different – like a James Bond-type spy movie set on an island.

According to original co-writer and the sequel's co-director Jared Bush, the story was going in a different direction when he was first welcomed into the creative team for Zootopia. "When I first got here, he [Zootopia director Byron Howard] had pitched this notion of, 'It's going to be a world of talking animals and they're going to have technology and wear clothes,'" he said during a recent appearance on the podcast The Town with Matthew Belloni.

"And when I was first hired, that movie was almost like a James Bond adventure on an island in the middle of the ocean somewhere. And I was like, okay, well, I like spy movies. This is great," he continued, saying that eventually they "threw that whole idea in the trash."

"It's not going to be a spy movie. It's not going to be an island. Actually, it's just going to be the story in this city of animals," Bush recalled, revealing that the "crime procedural" element of the story wasn't even there at that point either. "It was like, what are we going to do? We got to start from scratch."

It sounds like it took a while to get to what we know now as Zootopia, and we can only be grateful for the process – both the original film and the recently released sequel have had outstanding receptions from both critics and audiences around the world, with a third movie likely to continue the saga.

Released on November 28, Zootopia 2 picks up shortly after the ending of the first film, with unlikely buddy cop duo Nick Wilde the fox and Judy Hopps the bunny now officially partners on the ZPD. This time, they have to unravel a new conspiracy featuring an adorable newcomer, Gary De'Snake.

You can still catch Zootopia 2 in some theaters, and you can also check out our interviews with the cast and filmmakers on bringing the animal world to life and introducing reptiles to the series.

For more, see our guide to all the upcoming Disney movies for everything else that's in the works.