Pixar just dropped the home release dates for Hoppers, and if you spent the last several months watching the conversation around this film from a distance and waiting to form your own opinion, that wait is ending faster than you probably expected. Digital is available starting April 28. Blu-ray arrives June 2. Disney+ has not announced a date yet, which means if you want to watch it at home this month, you will have to buy it rather than stream it as part of a subscription.
That was intense 😓🦎
— Pixar (@Pixar) April 23, 2026
Add #Hoppers to your movie collection. Buy on digital April 28 and own on Blu-ray June 2. pic.twitter.com/MlpA17qsGG
The Dates
April 28 for digital puts Hoppers in home viewing territory almost immediately after its theatrical run. For a film that arrived with as much pre-release conversation as this one did, getting it into living rooms quickly makes sense. The June 2 Blu-ray date gives physical media collectors and Pixar completionists a full home release package with the kind of behind-the-scenes content that the studio's most dedicated fans always show up for. The missing piece right now is the Disney+ date, and there is currently nothing to suggest when that announcement is coming, so households that exclusively stream rather than purchase will be waiting longer than everyone else.
What the Film Actually Is
Hoppers stars Piper Curda as Mabel, a 19-year-old college student who loves animals and whose mind hops into a robot beaver. Bobby Moynihan voices King George, and Jon Hamm is Jerry Generazzo. The premise is exactly the kind of original, slightly absurdist concept that Pixar built its reputation on in its early years, a story that does not follow any recognizable franchise template and asks audiences to trust the studio with something genuinely new. Critics trusted it completely. The film earned a 97% score on Rotten Tomatoes, which placed it among Pixar's strongest critical performances in recent years and generated a level of enthusiasm from reviewers that the studio had not seen consistently since its peak era.
The Backstory That Followed It Into Theaters
Hoppers did not arrive as just another Pixar release. It arrived as a test case for whether the studio had figured out how to reconnect with an audience that had grown genuinely skeptical about what Pixar was making and why. Lightyear in 2022 became one of the most debated animated releases in recent memory, with conversations about messaging and perceived agenda-driven storytelling drowning out discussion of the film itself and yielding box-office numbers that reflected real audience resistance. Elio in 2025 followed a similar pattern. Inside Out 2 demonstrated that Pixar's audience was still there in massive numbers when the film connected broadly and avoided the cultural flashpoints that had damaged recent original releases.
Hoppers arrived with reports that earlier versions of the film carried more prominent environmentalist themes that were scaled back during production. Whether those adjustments were a response to the broader cultural conversation around Pixar or a standard part of the development process that got filtered through that conversation depends on who is telling the story. What the critics responded to was a finished film that worked on its own terms, and the 97% score is a concrete data point regardless of the context.
The Art of Hoppers Book
Disney Books previewed The Art of Hoppers alongside the home release announcement, and it is exactly what longtime Pixar fans expect from the Art of series. The book covers the making of the film through character designs, storyboards, color scripts, and exclusive interviews with the creative team alongside behind-the-scenes details about how the production came together. For aspiring animators and film enthusiasts who want to go beyond watching the finished product and understand the decisions that shaped it, the Art of book is the companion piece that makes a complete Hoppers collection feel worth pursuing.
Digital is April 28. Blu-ray is June 2. Disney+ is whenever Disney decides to tell us. For everyone who has been waiting to see what the conversation was actually about, this week is when that changes.
