As the 2025 release calendar comes to a close, three Disney movies rank among the top 10 highest-grossing movies of the year: Lilo & Stitch, Zootopia 2 and Avatar: Fire and Ash. Of those three, the Zootopia sequel reigns supreme not just at the Mouse House, but also as 2025’s highest-grossing Hollywood-produced movie, trailing only behind China’s Ne Zha 2. Now there’s another record that we can add to Zootopia 2’s list of accomplishments, and it’s one previously held by Frozen 2.
With a $1.46 billion global box office haul, Zootopia 2 is now the highest-grossing animated movie of all time, surpassing the $1.45 billion that Frozen 2 collected in 2019. Variety broke the numbers down further, sharing that the new Zootopia movie has made $333 million domestically and $1.13 billion internationally. It’s been particularly successful in China, ranking in over $500 million there. Zootopia 2 opened in theaters on November 26, and the outlet shared that in its fifth weekend, it earned an impressive $87.9 million.
Frozen 2 had a good six-year run, but now it’s Zootopia 2’s time to shine as the most financially successful animated movie. It was able to hit $1 billion 17 days after its release, and is one of only three 2025 movies that have crossed that milestone, the others being the aforementioned Ne Zha 2 and Lilo & Stitch, the latter being live-action remake of the same-named 2002 movie. If Zootopia 2 is still doing so well in theaters more than a month after audiences first started trickling in to see it on the big screen, now I wonder about its chances of hitting $2 billion.
Arriving almost 10 years after the first Zootopia movie, but taking place just a week after those events, Zootopia 2 sees Ginnifer Goodwin’s Judy Hopps and Jason Bateman’s Nick Wilde adjusting to being partners at the Zootopia Police Department while pursuing Ke Huy Quan’s Gary De’Snake. The movie’s other cast members include Fortune Feimster, Andy Samberg, David Strathairn, Idris Elba, Shakira, Patrick Warburton and Qunita Brunson, among many others. Behind the scenes, Jared Bush wrote the sequel and co-directed with Byron Howard.
In addition to being a commercial success, Zootopia 2 has also been well received critically. Our own Dirk Libbey rated it 4 out of 5 stars in his Zootopia 2 review, saying the movie “brings back everything that we loved from the first film and introduces lots of new characters and locations for us to enjoy.” Dirk also said that in “the hierarchy of Disney's feature film sequels,” Zootopia 2’s quality more closely matches with Frozen 2 than something like Ralph Breaks the Internet, making it all the more fitting that this sequel broke the record held by our last adventure with Anna and Elsa.
Whenever Zootopia 2’s theatrical run ends, you’ll be able to stream it with a Disney+ subscription sometime in 2026. Next up on the Disney animated movie front is Pixar’s Hoppers, which comes to the 2026 movies schedule on March 6.
