With Hoppers, Pixar tests the appetite for original stories. Will audiences bite?

He had seen documentaries in which robotic animals with eyeball cameras captured footage of natural habitats. But what if that technology was so good that no one could tell the difference? And to make it even more zany, what if someone went undercover in that animal body?

The pressure of Pixar’s legacy can be a little overwhelming, and coming up with an original idea is difficult, says Chong, who directed Hoppers and also served as a writer on the film.

“For a Pixar movie, it’s very high stakes,” he says. “But I just felt like I had a really funny idea, and I thought as long as we made it really funny and had characters you loved, to me that’s the key to every Pixar movie – really awesome characters that really connect emotionally with people.”