Zootopia

(The more would be ‘Big Hero 6’ and ‘Zootopia’.)

After months of hype and controversy, the big night is finally upon us. The red carpet has been rolled out, the votes have been cast, and host Jimmy Kimmel has rehearsed all his best Matt Damon jokes. At last, the 89th Academy Awards have arrived.

Since the introduction of the Best Animated Feature Oscar at the 74th Academy Awards in 2002, we’ve seen a steady exponential increase in animated movies over the years. Pixar, and, by extent, Disney, has usually dominated the competition, with eight wins out of ten nominations, followed by DreamWorks and Disney’s animation studio. This year, we have a record 27 movies eligible for the award, and while the Academy can pick only five to nominate, for now it’s anyone’s game.

A single giraffe in Zootopia contained over nine million individual hairs, which is more hair than all of the last three Disney animated films together. That’s just one of the hair-raising (sorry) Zootopia facts in the latest installment of You Think You Know Movies!

As it turns out, making a politically-minded movie for kids can be financially successful.

That sound you hear is the folks over at Disney popping a couple dozen bottles of champagne — Zootopia didn’t just open at number one at the box office, it had the biggest opening of any film in the history of Walt Disney Animation Studios, beating out 2014’s Frozen. Unfortunately, the rest of the newcomers didn’t fare quite as well, with London Has Fallen and Whiskey Tango Foxtrot limping into second and fourth place, respectively.

Along the western edge of Disneyland, rises a craggy peak of mossy cliffs, tangled tree roots, and thorny briar patches. This attraction — part animatronic carnival, part kid-friendly log flume — is known as Splash Mountain, and thanks to the technical wizards at Walt Disney Imagineering, it really looks like an authentic summit. But of course, it’s not; it was built in the late 1980s at a reported cost of some $75 million. It’s a very fun ride — and possibly the strangest in the entire Disney empire, since it’s essentially a giant $75 million monument to a movie that Disney has kept out of circulation for more than 30 years.

In the beginning of Disney’s ‘Zootopia,’ Judy Hopper, a young determined bunny with big aspirations, is told by her parents that complacency is better than chasing your dreams. “You know why your mom and I ended up so happy?” her small town carrot farmer dad asks. “We gave up on our dreams and settled!” At first ‘Zootopia’ might seem like Disney once again banging their follow-your-dreams and never-give-up drum, but it quickly overcomes that outdated adage. Instead, Judy’s story of perseverance becomes the entry point for a larger movie about the tough realizations that come with leaving a bubble of blind comfort, and one that uses he animal kingdom to comment on prejudice, race relations and police brutality.

The marketing for Disney’s Zootopia hasn’t exactly hooked us just yet, but early word-of-mouth suggests that the studio’s latest animated adventure is not only smarter and more subversive than the trailers would have you believe, but that Zootopia is right up there with the best of Pixar. Speaking of which: Like Pixar, Zootopia has its own easter eggs connecting it to other Disney films — well, it has at least one easter egg, and you can check it out in this gallery of new, high-res photos from the upcoming film.

Disney’s next animated release is Zootopia, and while the trailers have yet to really sell this thing (save for a couple of solid sight gags), the studio has released two new clips along with the final trailer to get you in the mood for some wacky animal shenanigans. You can watch the full trailer above and check out the two clips below, which do a better job of conveying the film’s sense of humor.

Disney's upcoming roster of animated pictures already includes projects like Pixar's long-awaited 'The Good Dinosaur,' 'Inside Out,' and 'Finding Dory.' Now the company has officially dated two more projects from its Walt Disney Animation Studios.