Pixar just dropped the trailer for Hoppers, their latest original film, and yeah, it’s riding on some serious Avatar vibes. If you’ve been holding your breath waiting for the next Avatar trailer (Fire & Ash still hasn’t shown up), Pixar’s new movie offers a fresh fix, but with a twist.
Hoppers revolves around Mabel, an animal-loving young girl who swaps her mind into a robotic beaver to sneak into the animal kingdom. It’s not your typical body-swap comedy like Freaky Friday or The Hot Chick. Instead, it leans heavily into the Avatar playbook (with mind transfer and cultural infiltration), except instead of Navi, it’s beavers.
There was some chatter in December 2024 from a former Pixar artist who claimed that the filmmakers were told to “downplay” Hoppers’ environmental message. Daniel Chong addressed this in a July 2025 Screen Rant interview, pushing back on the censorship claims. He explained, “If anything, I felt a lot of alignment. […] The honest truth about the process, though, is that every movie here goes through so much iteration and changes a lot, and I can see, maybe, to some other people’s eyes within the studio, [how] they might see [that] it looks like things are being censored. But, really, [the movie is] just going through its natural course of iteration and stuff–at least for our movie.”
That makes sense. Pixar movies evolve constantly, scripts rewrite, scenes rework, and ideas get tested and retested before hitting the screen. The bigger question might be: How do you balance delivering a message with keeping the movie entertaining for all ages? That’s something that the studio has been wrestling with in the past while, especially when it comes to their original pieces.
If you’ve been paying attention to Pixar’s recent output, you’ll notice that sequels dominate their film lineup. The Incredibles 3, Toy Story 5, and Coco 2 all have confirmed dates and rumors of Finding Nemo 3, Ratatouille 2, and Monsters Inc. 2 also float around. So, it’s pretty clear that Pixar is placing most of its bets on familiar and popular franchises that worked well in the past, while original stories are struggling to get the same spotlight.
Elio, Pixar’s last original, for example, flopped hard. With a production budget estimated between $150 and $200 million, it has made just $72.3 million worldwide so far. That’s not a big hit. And it seems to have frustrated the animation company a bit. Just recently, they took to Instagram to fire a subtle shot at fans who complain about the lack of originals but don’t actually support them at the box office: “Stop complaining that Disney doesn’t make original stories if you don’t show up to see them in movie theaters, and support them in the first place.”
Still, Hoppers looks like a decent step back toward originality, even if it still doesn’t look like Pixar’s golden era quality (Inside Out, Up, or Finding Nemo). The story might not break new ground, but it’s worth a shot. After all, it’s good to see Pixar trying original ideas again, instead of just squeezing every last cent out of familiar franchises.
The voices are from Jon Hamm, Bobby Moynihan, and Piper Curda, making the cast solid enough to carry the film’s quirky premise. Directed by Daniel Chong, known for Cartoon Network’s We Bare Bears and its 2020 feature film, Hoppers has a release date set for March 6, 2026, under the Disney banner.
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