The 21-year-old Aussie scored an adorable cameo in what could be one of the biggest films in 2025.

Robert Irwin was crowned the winner of Dancing With the Stars in the US with his dance partner Witney Carson. Picture: Getty

Robert Irwin will be soaking up the praise after his major Dancing With The Stars win in the US this week. But as he was shaking his hips and flinging his dance partner Witney Carson into the air on Wednesday, his next project hit the big screen.

While many Aussies would have been dying to watch him on the US dancing show’s grand finale, they can easily nip to cinema to see his cameo in Zootopia 2. The 21-year-old nabbed a role in the highly-anticipated sequel to the 2016 animated comedy, and the Hollywood film has received widespread acclaim.

The movie has copped a 95 per cent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes and critics are absolutely loving it.

Flix’s Nathan Swank said Zootopia 2 “might be one of the funniest films of the year” and said the parents in his cinema were laughing just as much as the kids.

Manuel São Bento from Movies We Texted About said the sequel is “more than just a simple animated adventure.

“This is a story about the responsibility to remember and correct, inspiring us to believe that building a better world requires the courage to look back so we can, finally, move forward together,” he wrote.

Zootopia 2 has an all-star cast and the film is now in cinemas. Picture: Disney

The San Francisco Chronicle’s Zaki Hasan praised the film’s “brave choices” that were made “over and over again”.

“Zootopia 2 ventures into new territory without losing its emotional footing. It shows us how trust and cooperation often hinge on small, brave choices made,” he said.

The film is set just one week after the events of the first movie finished, with police officers Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) and Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman) pursue Zootopia’s new and mysterious reptilian resident Gary De’Snake.

It has an all-star cast, including Shakira, Idris Elba, Alan Tudyk, Huy Quan, Andy Samberg, Patrick Warburton, Quinta Brunson, and Danny Trejo.

Robert scored a role as Robert Furwin, a koala dressed in the wildlife warrior’s iconic khakis.

The 21-year-old revealed the big Hollywood gig during Dancing With The Stars’ Disney week.

“He looks just like me,” Robert said last month.

Robert Irwin’s character in Zootopia 2 is a koala called Robert Furwin. Picture: Disney

In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, he said it was an honour to portray an Aussie animal in such a big project.

“When they said you’re going to play a koala named Robert Furwin, I’m like, mate, it doesn’t get better than that, the icon of Australia,” he said.

“I’ve actually been involved in koala conservation for a long time. Koalas are an endangered species, so we work very hard on rescuing and rehabilitating koalas at our hospital, releasing them back out into the wild.

“So it was very cool to kind of represent that and play a small part in a film that is, I think, helping people reconnect with with animals and nature.”

The first Zootopia film had a budget of $150 million and pulled in more than $1 billion at the global box office. The sequel had the same budget and it’s already a third of the way to breaking even.