Zootopia Exposed! (Part One)
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What is the story behind the creation of Zootopia?
Pushkin.
On a recent snowy day, I took my four and a half year old to a movie theater on Manhattan's Upper West Side. This was only her second time ever at the movies. She was very excited. I bought her a large tub of popcorn. The theater was crowded. We were there to see Disney's Zootopia II, a film that is now the highest-grossing animated movie of all time. We sat enraptured for the better part of two hours. And at the end, she turned to me and said, Thank you, Daddy. And I said to her, Oh, this wasn't for you. This was for me. I'm on assignment. My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to Revisionist History, my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. The story I'm about to tell you is the strangest Hollywood story you have ever heard.
It makes no sense. It invites all manner of absurd speculation. It's going to take us two episodes to unravel it. And even then, your mind will be in such a swirl that you will almost certainly feel compelled to seize Utopia II for yourself. And if you've already seen it... to grab any one of your available children and see it again, and to whisper under your breath when you think your little companion isn't listening, WTF. All of this started when we got a call from Angus Fletcher, saying a friend of his needed to speak to me. It was urgent. The friend had a story to tell, a story with so many layers, the friend said, that there was no way to do it justice in a single episode. Two minimum. For future reference, if you need to get my attention, this is the way to do it.
All right, can you hear me? There you are.
Okay. Gary Angus Fletcher. The gang is back together. Right away, I hopped on a Zoom with the two of them.
If you want, I mean, I can tell you how the story started and then Gary, you want to, do you want to? So, okay.
All right, jump in.
If you are a longtime listener of Revisionist History, you will know the name Angus Fletcher. He's an English professor at Ohio State and runs their narrative project. I love Angus. I think Angus is a genius. Angus has been featured on more revisionist history episodes than anyone else. Our three-part rewrite of The Little Mermaid, In Defense of Paw Patrol, and, and this is relevant to the story I'm about to tell you, we did a series of episodes a few years back called Development Hell. where we interviewed screenwriters about their best idea that never made it to the screen. And Angus came on to talk about an absolutely bananas sci-fi project he worked on with a good friend of his, the Hollywood screenwriter Gary Goldman.
And during that episode, I concluded that not only is Angus a genius, but Gary is a genius too. Anyway, back to the matter at hand.
So basically I get a phone call from Gary and Gary and I are old friends. We've worked together on a bunch of screenwriting projects. Gary is one of the most famous and eminent screenwriters in Hollywood. If you love the end to Total Recall, you can thank Gary for that.
Gary Goldman grew up in the South. He was a protege of the novelist Walker Percy, went to Brandeis, spent some time working in a hospital in Israel during the Yom Kippur War, ended up in Hollywood, and has worked with everyone. Paul Verhoeven, James Cameron, Ridley Scott, David Fincher, Steven Spielberg.
So Gary calls me up and he goes, Angus, have you seen Disney's latest movie?
Here, Angus is referring to the first Zootopia film, which came out in 2016, featuring a rabbit named Judy Hopps and a con artist fox named Nick Wilde, who live in a world inhabited entirely by animals and who have to work together to solve a mystery involving the disappearance of predators. It's very good.
Zootopia, a gleaming city where animals of all breeds, predator and prey alike, live together in peace and harmony.
Zootopia did very well. It grossed a zillion dollars and won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. Gary watched all this success closely.
And it's a big deal. I mean, it's a big family event. I can send you the pictures of us drinking champagne when Zootopia won the Academy Award.
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