Zootopia 2 saw an undeniable slowdown Monday at the box office in China, where the film has been a powerhouse shattering records, but it’s still topped $436 million in the Middle Kingdom and approaching $950 million today in total global receipts.
Jason Bateman, Fortune Feimster, and Ginnifer Goodwin star in “Zootopia 2.”
Source: Disney
Zootopia 2 – By The Numbers
After its record-setting bow on Thanksgiving weekend proved to be the biggest weekend for cinemas so far in 2025, Zootopia 2 has now amassed $700 million internationally to date and officially stood at $916 million worldwide on Sunday. By tonight and with half-day Asia Pacific included, the Disney sequel will march closer to the $1 billion threshold.
I expect Zootopia 2 to pass that magic number sometime in the next 48-60 hours, or by sometime Wednesday at the latest, depending on just how sharp and widespread the slowdown becomes. And having already entered the top-5 grossing movies of 2025, it’s already a blockbuster success destined for a top-3 spot on the box office charts.
Zootopia 2 And The Middle Kingdom
This global box office phenomenon around Zootopia 2 is driven by its outsized popularity in China. The sequel has already sold about 90% as many tickets so far in its debut as Avengers: Endgame sold during its entire run (which was the previous record-holder for ticket sales) in China, to put the film’s first 10 day of release in the market into context.
The Zootopia franchise’s success there is due to the fact the first film was the biggest animated film in history in China, developing a massive fanbase loyal to the franchise, plus broader mainstream popularity that continued and grew on home media. There’s also a Zootopia Land at Disneyland in Shanghai, which Disney uses to cultivate the family fanbase around Zootopia and its characters.
Smartly, Disney relied again on beloved Chinese voice actors to provide Zootopia 2’s dubbing, including returning stars Ji Guanlin and Chang Chen, as well as newcomers to the franchise Da Peng, Fei Xiang (aka) Christian Rand Phillips, Jin Chen, and Wang Anyu. And the studio promoted the film heavily with targeted publicity for a long time, until anticipation for Zootopia 2 was off the charts.
A fascinating example of local marketing is that this is the Year of the Wood Snake in China, representing self-reflection, insight, and growth by shedding old habits and embracing a renewal, all major themes of Zootopia 2’s story. Disney was able to wrap their marketing around that, turning an already beloved and resonant franchise into an even more popular pop-culture zeitgeist.
Chinese audiences love Zootopia’s framing of the young adult leaving the farm to go to the big city, much to the fears of their family, and how city life can be overwhelming and rural people must overcome prejudices against them and also learn to adapt to the pace of the city and try to help influence the city to be calmer and more accepting.
Disney saw the success and poured effort into building and maintaining that fanbase, tying into lots of Chinese business tie-ins and merchandising ahead of release, and multi-language campaigns that even made efforts to keep the jokes and gags into forms that translate correctly into the languages in order to keep it funny for them.
The payoff is obvious, and just remember that merchandising almost always dwarfs the box office on big tentpole hits like this, and in merchandising profit margins are huge.
Zootopia 2 might seem to be facing a large week-to-week decline after it’s spectacular opening and Thanksgiving holiday sophomore weekend, but with such a huge head-start and plenty of momentum left even at the slower pace, the film will cruise past $1 billion and should easily top $500 million in China. How much higher it goes remains to be seen, but it’s already a big win for Disney and makes a third outing certain.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/markhughes/2025/12/08/why-zootopia-2-is-setting-records-in-china-at-436-million-box-office/
