The fact that Byron Howard is not a household name to even cinephiles, most members of the film media, or aspirational industry followers, is simply…bizarre. He has directed two certified animated hits and two blockbusters. He is now a four-time Oscar nominee and has won the Animated Feature Academy Award for both “Zootopia” and “Encanto.” Considering the critical acclaim and $1.8 billion box office gross for “Zootopia 2” (still in the top 10 in the U.S. 90 days after release), he should be a frontrunner to take a third trophy (he earned his third BAFTA Award on Sunday). At the moment, a phenomenon from Sony Pictures Animation and Netflix appears to be blocking their path. And like his co-director, Jared Bush, there is an anonymity that comes with directing films for Walt Disney Animation Studios that their peers at Pixar generally do not experience (and Bush has had the title of Chief Creative Officer at the division for almost two years). That is, unless they show up at a Disney Store or theme park in China, where they will almost immediately be recognized.
Earlier this month, the creative force behind“Bolt” and “Tangled” took some time to chat to The Playlist about why “Crazy Animal City,” as it’s referred to in China, is so massive in the world’s most populous nation, the fan fiction for Nick and Judy (voiced by Jason Bateman and Ginnifer Goodwin), the “good pressure” of a potential third installment (which has not been officially confirmed), holding out to meet Steven Spielberg at the Oscar luncheon, some of his other favorite 2026 Academy Awards and, seriously, so much more.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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The Playlist: What did this particular nomination mean to you?
Byron Howard: Well, it is different this time. I’ve never done a sequel before, and one of the things I loved about the movie is honestly jumping back in with Jared and [producer] Yvett [Merino]. The last time we were together was on “Encanto,” and Jared and I have been a team for almost 15 years now, which is crazy. That seems insane. I met him right after I finished “Tangled,” which was crazy. Which did not get nominated, by the way. Yeah, did not.
Hey, they all can’t get nominated. It happens.
What the heck? [Laughs.] But honestly, it is such a weird thing. I grew up loving movies. My dad took me to movies all the time. We would just go see “Das Boot,” and we’d go see “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” and we went to see all three “Star Wars” movies back to back in 70 Millimeter. So, growing up watching the Oscars, it was sort of a surreal step into Hollywood. And honestly, it is absolutely that. I’ve never gotten over the weird experience of being around that many celebrities. Leonardo DiCaprio was right behind me in this photo the other day. I didn’t even know he was there. But then Steven Spielberg, whom I’ve always wanted to meet, was up on the top. Jared Bush gets to stand right next to Steven Spielberg, talk to him for five minutes, and then they call Steven Spielberg down to kind of put him on a lower level so that some people can be seen behind him, and he stands right next to Yvett. So, both of them got the chat, and I’m still…anyway, so it’s very frustrating this world.
Does that mean you did not get to talk to Spielberg even though you wanted to?
I did not. There’s some reason Steven Spielberg doesn’t want to talk to me.
I mean, I’ve got to be honest, Jared has that power position now. It’s that power gig.
And a likable face.
Clearly, you’ve been to these events before, and you’ve been an Academy member for a long time. Was there anyone you wanted to meet or wanted to catch up with, that you had a chance to?
Well, I was hoping to get a chance to talk to Chloe Zaho. I loved “Hamnet” and Ryan Coogler, I know. I’d seen Ryan at some of these events before, but man, I thought “Sinners” was such a surprise. I knew nothing going in. People at work had seen it. They knew the surprises that it packed, and I went in with absolutely fresh eyes, and it just blew me away. So the films are also different this year, which is great. And Paul Thomas Anderson, I loved his films from way back, and I love “There Will Be Blood,” one of my favorites. And again, I knew almost nothing about “One Battle After Another” until I saw it for the first time. And that’s such a great thing this year. Every film is so different. It’s very hard to compare, honestly. So I feel strongly about all those films, but they’re all for three different reasons. But no, honestly, I didn’t get to meet Chloe either.
You were finishing this movie right up until it came out. Are you one of those Academy members who don’t have time to see movies during the year? You’re too busy, and you catch up over the holidays?
Yeah, this time definitely. It’s funny because we get very tired at the end of production, and we finished right at Thanksgiving. I got that nasty flu that was going around for two weeks. So, for two weeks we sat down, me and my husband, and we caught up and watched tons of movies. And also Lee Unkrich, he’s a friend of ours from Pixar, great director, did this amazing book on “The Shining,” which is in “Zootopia 2,” the big nod obviously to that. And Lee wrote this crazy, detailed book, which is, I cannot recommend enough. It’s like 800 pages with such detail. And it gave me a great appreciation before the film. But that sort of Film Geek does not come easy. It’s just such a nice thing because the whole thing, when you’re stepping into award season, everyone in that room is top of their craft, and we’re just very lucky to be in there at all. And just to be able to share the admiration and share war stories from show to show is great.
The global response to the movie has been impressive. The box office is at $1.8 billion at the time of this interview.
Yeah, that’s insane.
It hasn’t really slowed down.
No, it’s still going right?
It’s still going. Obviously, you hoped it would do well, but you could not have imagined it was going to be the number one movie of 2025.
No, no, no. I couldn’t. It is funny. I had a sense from the first one that it would do well, and it was weird. I kind of knew the first one would do a billion, like Jared and I talked about it, and I had a vibe about it. For some reason, it felt like it would do it. But this is the sequel thing, when people love a first run film when the first comes out and they fall in love with it, and then time has elapsed when they’re waiting for you to produce another chapter, you at least live up to what that first one was and hopefully do better and expand the story, have people come back, see something new, not just do a retread of the first film. And the fact that honestly, because last time Jared and I and Yvett worked together was “Encanto” during the pandemic, I made “Encanto with them, we were all in our homes. I was at this desk for about a year and a half making that film, looking at that monitor over there for color, correcting storyboard sketches over here, talking to people on Zoom just like that, who were all broken apart. And we could not get together to work collaboratively. And the fact that we had been taken away from that theater experience for years was crazy. And just the whole rhythm of Hollywood and movie-going and social gatherings around movies got massively disrupted. So, there was a great worry, I think from us and the studios in general, everywhere, can we get people back into the theater? So, those were amazing box office numbers, but really, it was telling us that people took the trouble to get back and sit down and watch these things.
There was a wonderful event in Santa Barbara. It’s called Mike’s Field Trip To The Movies, but they bus in 2,000 underprivileged kids from all over that area. I think there are 60 to 70 buses of kids who come in. They fill that huge theater up there in Santa Barbara, and they all watch an animated film. I think it was “Inside Out 2” last time. This time, the kids voted for “Zootopia 2,” and those kids are so effusive, and the cheering and the gasps and the fact that they’re there together experiencing that. I don’t choke up easily, to be honest. But it chokes me up because the first time I saw “The Empire Strikes Back,” I was 11 years old, my class went, I think because the teachers wanted to see it, the teachers wanted to go see it. I was also moving away from Philadelphia at the time to Washington State. So this was my goodbye to my friends in my class. I sat in the front row of a 70 millimeter theater looking up at Hoth getting split open and the kiss with Luke and Leia and Han and all that business and the duel and my father thing. And man, it was just like going back to my dad loving movies. I just think that getting swept away like that in a group of people who are having that collective experience is such a powerful thing.
I want to go back to the box office success, and I’m saying this half seriously, can you and Jared walk down the street in Beijing? It’s such a massive hit there. Will you be recognized? Oh wait, you have a story…
I do. I have a story. So, for the first film, we didn’t do official press in China, but our producer, Clark Spencer, and I, my husband was also with me, we’d done press in Japan, and we’re like, well, China’s right there. Let’s just hop over to Shanghai. Some folks at Disney were going to show us around. They took us to the Disney store in Shanghai, and I heard a group of teenagers across the store shouting, “‘Crazy Animal City,’ ‘Crazy Animal City’!” And I’m like, “What are these guys talking about?” And they come over, and they kind of mobbed me. They had recognized me from the videos, but I hadn’t been told what the title in Mandarin was of Zootopia, which is actually “Crazy Animal City.” And I’m like, “Oh, so you guys know I’m part of the movie.” Yeah, it was funny. I like that we have anonymity in animation, but the Chinese audience was so appreciative with the first film, I think, because in that first film, a lot of young people saw themselves in Judy, leaving more rural areas and moving to the big city to take care of their families and make something of their lives and face new challenges and stuff. And so that was big for them, I think. And honestly, the appreciation there was great. I didn’t go over to Shanghai at this time, but Jared and Yvett, Ke, and Ginnifer did. And yeah, the emotional connection to the film, the films, both of ’em have been really phenomenal from China. It’s like, it’s unspeakably great.
