'Hoppers' Is the Original Pixar Movie Fans Have Been Waiting For

'Hoppers' Is the Original Pixar Movie Fans Have Been Waiting For

After several years of shaky box office performance for Pixar's original, non-sequel releases, the studio's spring 2026 release Hoppers arrived carrying real weight of expectation, both as the studio's thirtieth feature film and as its most expensive wholly original production since Coco nearly a decade earlier. The result vindicated the bet: Hoppers has become one of the best-reviewed films of the studio's recent history, and a genuine sign of life for original animated storytelling at a moment when sequels have dominated the box office. A Strange, Ambitious Premise Directed by Daniel Chong, creator of the animated series We Bare Bears, Hoppers follows Mabel Tanaka, a college student voiced by Piper Curda, who transfers her consciousness into the body of a robotic beaver in order to infiltrate a wetlands beaver colony and warn its inhabitants about looming human development threatening their ecosystem. It's a premise that invites easy comparisons to Avatar's min…