Hoppers (2026) on Netflix

PG20261h 44mAdventure Animation Comedy Family Sci-Fi

Mabel Tanaka has looked after a glade since childhood. Mayor Jerry Generazzo plans a beltway across it, so she hops into a robotic beaver to speak with the animals there.

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Netflix4.2/5
IMDb7.2/1085,540 votes
Rotten Tomatoes94%

Trailer

Plot summary

At six, Mabel Tanaka tries to free her class pets and is suspended from school. Her mother sends her to stay with her grandmother beside a glade, and the older woman's love of nature shapes the girl. Thirteen years later Mabel's parents have moved away and her grandmother has died; Mabel, a student at Beaverton University, still tends the glade. Mayor Jerry Generazzo announces a beltway that would cut through it and claims the animals have already gone, and her campaign to stop the work fails. Trying to draw the animals back, she learns that Dr. Sam Fairfax, her biology professor, has built the Hoppers program in secret with two colleagues, Nisha and Conner, letting a human inhabit a robotic animal. Sam tells her not to meddle with wildlife, but Mabel enters a robotic beaver and leaves the lab.

Cast

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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Hoppers (2026)

Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.

Director Daniel Chong originally pitched Hoppers with penguin heroes, but Pete Docter turned it down since penguins had already led films like Happy Feet and Penguins of Madagascar, pushing Chong to switch the protagonists to beavers instead.
A former Pixar artist told The Hollywood Reporter in December 2024 that filmmakers had been told to "downplay" Hoppers' "planned message of environmentalism," a claim director Daniel Chong later denied, saying he felt "a lot of alignment" during the process.
A minor character named Tom the lizard went viral online after his teaser appearance, generating memes that Disney says drew up to 316 million views, and even a mascot that photobombed ESPN's Super Bowl LX coverage.
The city of Beaverton, Oregon officially declared March 5, 2026 "Hoppers Day," with Mayor Lacey Beaty presenting stars Piper Curda and Bobby Moynihan a handmade wooden key to the city during a visit tied to the film's release.
Hoppers' opening weekend made it the highest-grossing debut for an original Pixar film since Coco in 2017, and the biggest opening for an original animated film since the start of the pandemic.
Pixar chief creative officer Pete Docter announced the title Hoppers at the August 2024 D23 fan event, after which Luca writer Jesse Andrews revealed on Twitter that he had already been working on the script for three years.