Disney’s New Movie Unlocks Pixar’s All-Time Elite Rotten Tomatoes List

Disney’s new movie is bouncing to the higher-end of Pixar’s Rotten Tomatoes charts.

Pixar’s latest installment, Hoppers, centers on a young girl named Mabel (Piper Curda), whose mind gets transferred into a robotic beaver with hopes of saving a forest from being destroyed by humans. It’s a zany concept that’s being compared to another Disney property, Avatar, but with a taste of Pixar charm.

Now, with moviegoers seeing the film, Hoppers currently has a strong 94% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. If that rating stands, it ties with Toy Story 4, Coco, and Inside Out 2 for the second-highest Popcornmeter for a Pixar movie. The record-holder is still the 2020 film Onward, which has a 95% score. Nevertheless, Hoppers would join the top 5 highest-rated Pixar movies with audiences.

Mabel in a bear's mouth in Hoppers — Mabel in a bear’s mouth in Hoppers

The film itself has already made a great impression on critics, with Hoppers reviews praising its dark humor, wholesome message, and quirkiness. Some audiences and critics are declaring that the new animated feature could be a return to form for Pixar, after years of mixed results with their original content. Currently, Hoppers has a 94% critics’ score, making it one of the best for a non-IP Pixar movie.

Highest-Rated Pixar Movies	Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score	Rotten Tomatoes Critics’ Score
Onward (2020)	95%	88%
Toy Story 4 (2019)	94%	96%
Inside Out 2 (2024)	94%	91%
Coco (2018)	94%	97%
Hoppers (2026)	94%	94%

No doubt, the new 2026 film is called a Pixar comeback. Until 2020, the studio was almost always guaranteed to deliver quality movies that also brought in good financial results. Then, the challenges began in 2020, which stemmed from the pandemic pushing several of their movies, such as Soul and Luca, to go straight to streaming on Disney+. The studio still faced trouble even after returning to theaters, as newer films like Elio and Lightyear failed to make a commercial impact.

Pixar became known as the studio whose movies always had a real-world message, but in recent years, some audiences felt that it had lost its touch, as some films became overly focused on a sociopolitical message. However, Hoppers goes back to the basics, being the voice of climate change while doing so with an emotional and heartfelt core.

Pixar’s big gamble couldn’t come at a better time, as the studio’s boss Pete Doctor expressed concerns with their recent slate of movies, via the Wall Street Journal. The chief creative officer acknowledged the studio’s lapse with their movie’s quality and emphasized their goal moving forward would be to embrace universally relatable concepts, stating: “As time’s gone on, I realized my job is to make sure the films appeal to everybody.”

Despite a whopping $150 million budget, the future is looking bright for Hoppers, thanks to the early word of mouth. It’s already the no. 1 movie domestically, beating out Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride! It’s projected to make as much as $40 million in its opening weekend, which would be one of Pixar’s best since 2018’s Coco.

With this being a great start, 2026 could be the year for Pixar. The studio has another film lined up, which is the fifth Toy Story installment, which will be released this June. Given that it’s a major IP, it’s expected to become another major hit for Pixar, especially as the story escalates with the threat of smart technology. Pixar isn’t stopping there, with Coco 2, The Incredibles 3, and Monsters Inc. 3 on the way, while their next original film, Gatto, will release in 2027.

Thus, it looks like Pixar is finally finding its footing again, with Hoppers quite possibly the movie that saved the studio’s prestige. Alongside Curda, the cast features Bobby Moynihan, Jon Hamm, Kathy Najimy, Dave Franco, and Meryl Streep. Daniel Chong helms his first Pixar movie in a directorial role after previously working on films like Elio and Inside Out 2 as part of the senior creative team.

Hoppers is now playing in theaters.