“Zootopia 2” producer Yvett Merino had an unconventional start at the Walt Disney Company. She wasn’t in storyboard rooms or art school corridors, but rather in the back halls of the studio, temping and learning the company from the inside out, one unglamorous job at a time.
In a business that loves a great origin story, Merino’s is refreshing as an outsider who has taken a very deserved seat at the Hollywood table. She was a sociology major who planned to go into social work, took a detour for “emotional survival,” and then slowly — and almost accidentally — built the resume that makes a modern producer invaluable.
Now, Merino is shepherding “Zootopia 2,” the sequel that has been both a critical and commercial success and landed her back in the Oscar conversation for best animated feature once again.
But if you’re looking for swagger, you won’t find it with Merino. The Mexican American filmmaker’s first instinct was to give credit where credit was due on Oscar nomination morning. “In that moment, I was thinking of all of the artists and the production management team that put everything into this film,” she tells Variety. “For it to be recognized and in the conversation for the year is super exciting.”
That impulse — to make the “I” an “us” — feels natural for her. She knows she didn’t do this on her own, which is a surprising quality in an industry where taking credit for success is common.
However, sequels come with added pressure, and the audience’s expectations are the heaviest weight of all. Merino frames the creative mandate in simple terms: if you’re going back, it has to be worth it. When she began conversations with directors Jared Bush and Byron Howard — who won the Academy Award for best animated feature for “Encanto” — she knew the bar was sky-high. “The film was very successful,” she says. “To do a sequel and to continue the story needed to be something just as good, if not better.”
Her anchor was character — specifically, Judy Hopps, voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin, and her evolving bond with Nick Wilde, voiced by Emmy winner Jason Bateman. “I love, love, love Judy Hopps,” Merino says. “As long as we hooked it on her and her relationship with Nick, and how their relationship evolved, I think I was in. It took a little bit to find that, but once we found that, we were kind of in for the ride.”
One reason the first “Zootopia” lasted is that it trusted kids with complexity, without alienating adults. Merino sees that trust as a responsibility. “Kids these days are super smart. We never want to, quote unquote, dumb it down for kids,” she says. “We just want to make sure it’s understandable and digestible.”
The studio’s internal calculus, she admits, can get anxious: Is this too complicated? Too referential? But Merino is comfortable with layered storytelling, even the kind that flies over a 5-year-old’s head and lands with the parents. “We have references to ‘The Shining’ and ‘The Silence of the Lambs,’” she says with a chuckle. “And I can guarantee you, the 5-year-olds in the audience have no idea what it is.”
In an era where artistic metrics are splintered between box office, streaming and the long tail of cultural chatter, Merino still believes in the old ritual. “I am a huge theater person, and I truly believe in having this communal experience with people that you don’t know, and laughing together, or having emotion and crying together, or having that jump scare together,” she says.
“Zootopia 2”
Disney Animation
In January, “Zootopia 2” became the ninth-biggest global release of all time, ranking behind two superhero juggernauts, “Spider-Man: No Way Home” ($1.9 billion) and “Avengers: Infinity War” ($2 billion).
And she’s pragmatic about what “success” even means now. “A hit is measured in so many different ways,” she says. “Finishing the film is its own success, because they’re difficult to make.”
Merino began at Disney in 1996, not as a rising creative, but as an assistant in the technology department — and she’s quick to correct the internet mythology. “I was a temp. I was an assistant,” she quips. “It says somewhere out there that I’m a software engineer — I’m not.”
Her path into production wasn’t a master plan so much as a slow awakening to the idea of loving what you do. She spent roughly a decade in administrative and studio infrastructure roles before a producer approached her about running an editing department. “Within six months, I knew — oh, this is what it’s like to love your job and to feel as if you belong here,” she says.
Merino’s personal milestones are also industry ones. During our time together, she reflects on being the first Latina nominated as a producer in the animated feature category for “Encanto,” and the ripple effect that followed. The messages she got were about the possibility. “My favorite thing is that people, after we won for ‘Encanto,’ I got so many texts from my girlfriends saying, ‘My daughter saw you and said, hey, I want to do that,’” she recalls.
Her answer to that visibility is accepting the responsibility. “The door has been kicked open a bit, so I feel like it’s my job to keep it open and continue to welcome people into the world of storytelling however they want to be a part of it.”
That ethos shows up not only in the films but inside the company. Merino describes helping create Voices at Disney and fostering internal spaces like the Encanto familia group — work she calls among her proudest achievements. “It truly solidified for me how important community is because I never felt so at home until I kind of built that community around me.”
In other words, and more importantly, representation isn’t only what’s on the big screen. It’s also about who’s in the room when choices are made.
She also speaks to leadership transitions at the company, with the newly minted CEO, Josh D’Amaro, and points to what she wants protected: creative nurturing at the highest level.
“Josh mentioned the importance of nurturing and understanding — the creative is really at the heart of what we do,” she says, referring to a company town hall. “I’m excited for everything that’s coming.”
And if “Zootopia 2” is, indeed, the kind of critical-and-commercial lightning strikes twice that sequels rarely become, it’s because Merino has this stubborn belief that craft, community and story always, ultimately win.
