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Zootopia 2 almost had a big beat-for-beat Silence of the Lambs tribute
Just because Zootopia 2 is an animated movie for kids doesn't mean it can't reference The Silence of the Lambs, right?
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In this month's edition of "sentences I thought I would never write," the current box-office-topping sequel to Disney's Zootopia features a reference to Jonathan Demme's film, The Silence of the Lambs. Yes, a children's animated film from Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures is a stealth homage to one of the most riveting horror films of all time. Suddenly, I am interested in seeing Zootopia 2.
Speaking to Variety, Zootopia 2 co-directors Byron Howard and Jared Bush revealed that they ensconced references to both The Shining and The Silence of the Lambs in their film. The directing duo revealed that a part of the film where a character is in prison is a reference to scenes of Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. However, the film originally followed The Silence of the Lambs a little too closely.
"[The prison] scene used to be four minutes long. We did word by word the first scene when Hannibal Lecter meets Clarice, all the way down to the guard saying, ‘All the way down the left, stay to the right,'" Bush said. However, the scene's original length weighed down the rest of the film. “That’s where we go, and now we have lost our younger audience members," Bush suggested, had they not decided to cut the sequence in question down to a more manageable length.
Hopefully, one of these days (maybe not too soon in the future), the kids seeing Zootopia 2 in theaters will watch The Silence of the Lambs, and realize where it all came from. I'll admit, I wonder if any kids who saw Detective Pikachu in theaters in 2019 have since watched Double Indemnity and realized that the Pokémon movie features a direct recreation of the staircase shot from the classic Billy Wilder noir. I'm not kidding you. It's haunted me for the past 6 years.
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