The following article contains spoilers for the film Hoppers.
In 2026, going to the movies is a lost art. Kids would rather play games on their iPad minis, and parents would rather hold off until it goes on streaming. Recent data shows that even Disney films aren’t bringing in the same large numbers that they used to. If all this is true, then how does Disney’s most recent film, Hoppers, make Pixar history by being the studio’s highest-grossing film on an opening weekend since 2017? The answer is not as straightforward as you may think.
Hoppers follows 19-year-old Mabel, a spunky, outspoken college student with a passion for environmentalism. She is at odds with the city’s mayor, Mayor Jerry, who does not share her sentiment toward the environment and actively advances initiatives that run counter to it. When he decides to enforce a measure to destroy the forest, Mabel struggles to find a way to stop him. It is then that she discovers her college professor’s personal project where humans can take over the bodies of animals and jumps at the opportunity to alert the masses.
Crowds and critics alike could not get enough of the film. Upon release, the movie secured a 98% Rotten Tomatoes score, achieving Certified Fresh status almost instantly. On its opening weekend, it grossed a whopping $88 million worldwide, the most Pixar has seen for an original film since the release of Coco in 2017.
The first step to understanding how an unconventional approach contributed to the film’s success is to dissect what was done ahead of its release. In 2025, Disney included a post-credit scene at the end of Elio that got people talking. It showed a green, frazzled-looking lizard spamming the lizard emoji on a smartphone as a speech-to-text voice repeatedly blared “lizard.” The clip concluded with on-screen text that read, “Hoppers: Only in Theaters March 2026.”
The scene’s menacing yet comedic nature left people wondering who this lizard is and where he came from. The lizard quickly became an infatuation as people saw themselves in this mindless, bug-eyed creature. Memes were quickly generated, and content containing the lizard skyrocketed. Girlfriends compared it to their boyfriends, and small companies used it to market their own products. One user’s Instagram post reads, “I came to the cinema just to see this lizard.” It got over 613,000 views in just over a week.
Disney’s marketing executives were privy to what was happening and decided to continue the built-up hype with their own promotional content. The lizard, who was revealed as “Tom Lizard,” was at the center of Disney’s marketing strategy. Social media marketing for the film mainly consisted of clips of Tom Lizard being himself. Other marketing tactics involved a real-life Tom Lizard mascot that attended promotional events and encouraged viewers to go watch the film in theaters. If you were to see any marketing from Disney surrounding Hoppers, chances are it displayed a crazed Tom Lizard causing haywire.
Pixar films are known for tackling otherwise heavy themes in a manner that is light and touching. For example, in Inside Out 2, anxiety is the leading theme, yet it is addressed sensibly by showing how healthy coping mechanisms can help. Hoppers, on the other hand, neglects the safe route entirely. The film has heavy themes, and it addresses them as such. The film’s antagonist, Mayor Jerry, is targeted by a group of animals called “The Council” throughout the film, but not in a way that seeks understanding and compromise. The group’s solution is to kill him.
When attempted murder doesn’t work, The Council resorts to another plan: mass murder. They plan to create a robotic version of Mayor Jerry to gather people at a political rally so that they could then charge speakers to frequencies so high that it kills everyone. Their plan ends up backfiring when fake Mayor Jerry is exposed as a robot, but the reveal certainly wasn’t PG by any means. The robot gets its face ripped off, exposing a raw, nightmarish profile, uncanny to that of The Iron Giant.
Adopting a plot point as risky as death, especially in a children’s film, is ambitious to say the least. Some parents were not happy with the decision to include themes as dark as this and took to social media to describe their negative experience with the film. Yahoo Entertainment reported that the film’s dark elements even left some children in tears. But in the world of advertising, all publicity is good publicity. The discourse surrounding the nature of the film brought more audiences in and increased revenue.
Despite the discourse, the success of Hoppers proves that taking risks can be well worth it. When taking the traditional route failed to generate revenue, Disney readjusted their game plan. Although it did lead to some negative backlash, the film’s comedic aspect ultimately outweighed its less lighthearted one. Challenging the norm isn’t guaranteed to be smooth sailing, but for Disney’s sake, I would suggest producing less content containing body horror and more containing that green menace of a lizard.