Leave it to beavers to be Pixar‘s Avatar. On Wednesday, the Toy Story and Inside Out 2 studio revealed the first trailer for Hoppers, Pixar’s next original, non-sequel project after this summer’s Elio failed to take off at the box office with $118 million in worldwide ticket sales. Hopping into theaters March 6, 2026, Hoppers asks the question: What if you could talk to animals and understand what they’re saying?
In Hoppers, scientists have discovered how to “hop” human consciousness into lifelike robotic animals, allowing people to communicate with animals as animals. “Let me get this straight,” human protagonist Mabel (Piper Curda) says in the trailer. “You created a fake animal which makes the other animals think you’re an animal? Guys, this is like Avatar!”
The adventure introduces Mabel, an animal lover who jumps — or hops — to try the new technology that allows her to communicate with animals and uncover mysteries within the animal world that are beyond anything she could have imagined. Hoppers also features the voices of Jon Hamm (Transformers One) and Bobby Moynihan (Monsters University).
“The question we’re answering is: ‘What if we could understand and communicate with the animal world?’” first-time Pixar director Daniel Chong said in a statement. “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.”
From Chong (We Bare Bears: The Movie) and producer Nicole Paradis Grindle (Toy Story 3, Incredibles 2), Hoppers is first up on Pixar’s upcoming slate that includes sequels Toy Story 5 (June 2026), Incredibles 3 (TBA), and Coco 2 (2029), and the original Gatto (June 2027) from Luca‘s Enrico Casarosa.
After Pixar president Jim Morris suggested in a May 2024 interview with Bloomberg that the studio would balance more sequels and spinoffs with original movie ideas following a financial slump — the pandemic-era titles Soul, Luca, and Turning Red, which bypassed traditional theatrical runs and went straight to Disney+ between 2020 and 2022 — Pixar’s Chief Creative Officer Pete Docter clarified that the company is still committed to original storytelling.
“One thing that I think was maybe slightly misinterpreted was the idea that we have to deliver more of what people know and maybe lean away from the personal. All of that’s true to some degree, but I think what we’re always trying to do is find what are the universal things that everybody believes, both in terms of concepts and in terms of life experience,” Docter told EW. “So, for example, I thought [as a kid] my toys came to life. I thought there were monsters that lived in the closet. We’re looking for those kinds of big, universal things that people go, ‘I already know that it’s an original idea, but it’s a concept that I had, too.’ So it’s kind of a sequel in that way. You know what I mean?”
“There’s a limited number of those, so they each have to be done in a very unique way through a specific lens. We want to hold onto that, but we want to make sure that they speak widely,” added Docter, who co-wrote the stories for 1995’s Toy Story and 1999’s Toy Story 2 before writing and directing original movies in 2001’s Monsters, Inc., 2009’s Up, and 2015’s Inside Out.
Elio — a cosmic misadventure about an alien-obsessed space fanatic (voiced by Yonas Kibreab) who is mistakenly identified as Earth’s leader by an interplanetary organization — opened to $20.8 million domestically in June, marking the worst debut for a theatrical-only movie in Pixar history. That’s below 2023’s Elemental, which opened with $29.6 million but legged it out to $484 million at the global box office, and 2022’s Lightyear, which cratered with a $218.8 million total gross after the Toy Story spinoff opened with $50.5 million.
Hoppers is only in theaters March 6, 2026.
