LOS ANGELES — Disney’s witty and relevant “Zootopia,” the box-office smash tale of a rural rabbit and a big-city fox who team up to investigate a string of animal disappearances, won the Oscar for best animated feature on Sunday.
The film tells the story of Judy Hopps, Zootopia Police Department’s sole bunny cop, who fights stereotypes about her species to earn a position on the force. She enlists the reluctant help of Nick Wilde — a sly, jaded scam artist of a fox fighting against his own species’ stereotypes — in a 48-hour bid to solve the case of the missing animals.
“We got this idea about five and a half, six years ago to talk about bias with talking animals,” the film’s co-director Byron Howard said following the win, adding that using animals prevented audiences from pre-judging the characters.
“Aesop knew this hundreds of years ago and it was something that animation is very uniquely equipped to do,” Howard said. “We were surprised by how timely the film became as the world sort of blew up.”
Co-director Rich Moore said he’s grateful to audiences for embracing a “story of tolerance being more powerful than fear of the other.”
“Zootopia” was widely considered the front-runner in the animation category, taking home six trophies at the Annie Awards and snagging a Golden Globe. The film raked in more than $1 billion at the box office.
On Sunday, Disney's '''' won the Oscars award for the Best Animated Feature Film at the 89th  ceremony held at Los Angeles. Pixar's animated short '''' won the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film and Disney's  won for  Visual Effects.

Others competing with ''Zootopia'' in the category were '''', '''', '''', and Disney's ''''. This was the first Oscar for directors  and  who were previously nominated for, respectively, '''' and ''''.

In the acceptance speech, director  said, "About five years ago, almost six now, ... we got this crazy idea of talking about humanity with talking animals in the hopes that, when the film came out, it would make the world just a slightly better place." The Disney movie addresses several social problems such as racism, sexism, prejudice, stereotyping, and fear. ''The New York Times'' said the parental guidance (PG) rated movie was "Funny, smart, thought-provoking — and musical, too."

Before announcing the award, Mexican actor  said, "As a Mexican, as a Latin-American, as a migrant worker, as a human being, I'm against any form of wall that wants to separate us." The movie was released in March, during the 2016 US presidential race.

In an interview with ''Variety'', the directors of ''Zootopia'' said movies about bias and discrimination haven't been Disney's main focus, but during its production, "Things were not great in the world. ... It was more like we had our finger on something important right now and we really need to do our best to portray this as honestly as we can. Then with the election and the campaign, the real move towards governing by fear ... I don't think we could have predicted it any closer with this film."

With this win, the Walt Disney Company has won nine out of ten Best Animated Feature Film Oscars in the last decade, with Pixar Animation Studio winning six out of them. ''Zootopia'' also won Best Animated Film at the  and the .