On the first day of recording music for “Zootopia 2,” Disney’s long-awaited sequel to their Oscar-winning, animal-filled original (released in 2016), composer Michael Giacchino asked the sea of musicians how many of them had also worked on the first film. “About 70%,” Giacchino estimates, raised their hands.
Almost everyone had returned.
Like the orchestra members, Giacchino couldn’t say no to “Zootopia 2,” which this time sees our heroes, mismatched cop duo Judy Hopps (Ginnfer Goodwin) and Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman) on the trail of a mystery involving a kidnapped snake (Ke Huy Quan) and some of Zootopia’s founding fathers (a family of “Succession”-style bobcats voiced by David Strathairn, Andy Samberg, Brenda Song and Macaulay Culkin).
TheWrap spoke to Giacchino in a small office next to the Eastwood soundstage on the Warner Bros. lot, just down the street from Walt Disney Animation Studios, where animators were still hard at work putting the finishing touches on the highly anticipated sequel (in theaters next week). Directors Jared Bush and Byron Howard were in attendance. Goodwin was leaving when we arrived. And the atmosphere was jovial and festive. Not only was the world of “Zootopia” returning to theaters, but it was actually going to sound really good.
“When I got the call for ‘Zootopia 2,’ it was phrased like, ‘Well, are you even going to have time?’ And I said to myself, “I’m going to take some time.” I want to make this movie,” Giacchino said. “The first ‘Zootopia’ was the only Disney animated movie I did. I love it so much. And I loved working with Byron and Jared. And I was like, there’s no way I’m not going to make this movie. Whatever happens in the rest of my life, I’ll make it work.”
For those keeping track at home, “Zootopia” and “Zootopia 2” are the only Walt Disney Animation Studios projects Giacchino has worked on, but he has composed music for Pixar films (“Up”, “The Incredibles”, “Ratatouille”, “Lightyear”, and even “Cars 2”), Lucasfilm films (“Rogue One: A Star Wars Story”), Marvel Studios films (“Spider-Man: Homecoming”, “Doctor Strange,” “Fantastic Four: First Steps”), live-action Disney films (“Sky High”) and even Disney park attractions (including Space Mountain at Disneyland). His good faith at Disney is beyond doubt. He can enter Club 33 at any time.
As for what he had to “work” to make “Zootopia 2,” he said his commitments to the “Fantastic Four” were the main concern. “That partly contributed to that, but it wasn’t 100% ready for me yet, when I was available, so it all ended up working out, but there was a lot of waiting, Well, I hope it goes well. But it did,” Giacchino said. “I love this thing so much, I just sat down and started writing. It wasn’t a tortured process.
With “Zootopia 2,” Giacchino said, “There are no rules about what to do with the score.” This infinity attracted him. “You can do anything, so it goes from one style to another. And I would say, even more than the first movie, we pushed it in all these crazy directions, from crazy Cajun to Zydeco or blues or techno or bossa nova,” Giacchino said. “It’s a laundry list. They keep denouncing all these things we do and there’s no instrument that’s off limits.”
We wondered if there was some sort of internal philosophy that drives Giacchino when he makes sequels – and he’s made quite a few.
“I always want to be additive because one of my favorite sequel scores of all time, and it can’t be matched, is ‘Empire Strikes Back,’ because not only do you get what you loved from the first one, but it also built a whole new set of themes for all these new places. Every time I jump into a sequel, I always approach it with that mindset – what’s new, what’s brought to me to play with,” Giacchino said. “Quite often, the sequels simply say: Hey, they like this first thing, let’s do what we did the second time.e. »
“Zootopia 2” is the opposite of this overly safe approach. “We know they like the first one. We’re going to use those themes, but only where it’s appropriate,” Giacchino said. The composer took inspiration from new characters (like a theme for Gary the Snake) and new environments (like the aquatic Marsh Market and its secret enclave of hidden reptiles). “It goes everywhere,” Giacchino promised.
As for his favorite new material to write, he said it involves these sneaky Lynx, which are found behind the “weather walls” that separate Zootopia’s different biomes. (They’re like big air conditioners that cool one area and heat another; Judy passes them on her way to town in the first movie.)
“I had so much fun playing with both of Lynx’s tricks, which is this very elegant, very old-fashioned waltz theme that sounds very refined. You can imagine old rich men sitting around with cigars, talking about their successes and their greatness, when in reality all they’re doing is leaving a wake of destruction in their wake,” Giacchino said. “That’s what this theme is. It’s a crazy hero theme. And then you have Gary’s theme, which is entirely framed in this idea of history and what’s been taken away.”
But back to the number of people returning to work on the “Zootopia 2” theme. Giacchino said that a few months ago, at the premiere of “Fantastic Four: First Steps,” he conducted some music before the film started, and a thought came to him.
“I was standing there backstage with the curtain drawn. And I look at the orchestra and I think: Holy cow, we’ve all been working together for almost 25 years. Most of these people, you look at them and see how we’ve all grown and aged and you think about the work we’ve done together. It was pretty emotional,” Giacchino said. “Standing up there with Byron and Jared in the booth, looking at people and asking how many people worked on the first ‘Zootopia’ and seeing all these hands go up, it was pretty amazing.
Another element of the music for “Zootopia 2” that made it special was that it was recorded together. Since COVID, more and more productions have the different parts of the orchestra recorded separately and then combined, afterwards, in the computer. This was not the case here.
“I like having everyone together, always, because you get an energy and a soul that is sometimes missing when you don’t have them all playing together, an orchestra by its definition, is a group of people playing together, not just playing together, playing on top of each other, sharing energies,” Giacchino said. “The sounds created by all these instruments bounce around the room in sound waves, whereas you don’t get that sound when you separate everyone. »
Giacchino said that when he appears on the soundstage, he uses what he has written as a guideline, using the orchestra as an opportunity to change and adjust what’s on the page. “I like having something in front of me that I can play with,” he said.
A few weeks later, we asked the filmmakers about their collaboration with Giacchino.
“Michael is unlike anyone else. I don’t know if anyone else could have composed this music, because it asks the composer to do so many different styles of music. And the themes that Michael wrote for Gary and the Lynxes feel like they’ve always been there. They’re so iconic, like they’re great Hollywood music that they put it in your chest,” Howard said. “There’s something about him that allows him to lock on to something and that’s very important because the one step that elevates everything the fastest is getting a score. Michael really hit it out of the park.”
Producer Yvett Merino added, “I loved working with Michael. I didn’t work on the first film, so it was my first film working with him, and the themes he wrote were some of the very first things he played for us, and everything else seemed to build on that. He’s very welcoming, collaborative, and open to trying different things. It’s really been a joy working with him.”
The only question is: when he starts composing for the inevitable “Zootopia 3”, how many of these same musicians will be back?
“Zootopia 2” hits theaters on November 26.
