Based on Zootopia 2’s incredible opening weekend at the box office, the sort that we haven’t seen since the last animated Disney release, there’s a good chance that you saw the movie over the past weekend. Fans are gushing over the film on social media, including one particular line which, it turns out, wasn’t actually in the film’s original script.
One fan took to Twitter to shout out one of her favorite parts of the film, specifically, a dry line delivered by Idris Elba’s Chief Bogo. At one point in the film, Bogo, no fan of Jason Bateman’s Nick Wilde, dismissively refers to the fox simply calling him, “orange dog.” Zootopia 2 director and Walt Disney Animation Studios Chief Creative Officer, Jared Bush, responded to the original post, revealing the line came directly from the actor. Bush said…
Idris Elba ad-libbed ‘Orange Dog’ in the recording booth and the second we heard it, we knew it had to be in the movie.
Fans are universally loving this detail. Many are surprised that the line came from Idris Elba himself, and if anything, the fact that it was an ad lib makes the line even funnier. Some of the best movie moments have been ad-libbed. Comments to Bush include…
Idris Elba has such a fantastically deadpan sense of humor that almost anything he says when delivered in the right tone can be hilarious. Calling a fox an “orange dog” wouldn’t be that great a line coming from just anybody, but Elba nails it.
One of the above comments, that the line sounds like it came from a different Idris Elba animated character, might be on to something. Knuckles from the Sonic the Hedgehog movies tends to use formal descriptive language, and one could absolutely imagine him calling a fox an orange dog. That may have very well been what Elba was thinking of when he ad-libbed the line.
With Zootopia 2 already a massive hit, and the movie already teasing a potential Zootopia 3, there’s a good chance Idris Elba will be back voicing Chief Bogo before too long. Hopefully, he’ll have a bigger role in the future, giving him a chance for even greater lines.