Aladdin (2019) (1 Viewer)

[Jake Lipson]

Another new TV spot:

 

[Edwin-S]

Hmmmm.

 

[holtge]

According to information provided by @Jeff Adkins over in the Endgame thread, Disney is attaching the Aladdin trailer to Endgame on 3D showings only. I'm quoting it here because what I want to talk about is more relevant to Aladdin than to Endgame and I didn't want to derail that thread.

Maybe I got lucky, Jake, but the original trailer for Aladdin played with my 2D showing of Endgame. Although we've seen that one previously, it was nice seeing it on the big screen!

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I saw Endgame in 3D but got the Lion King trailer. And two different Dark Phoenix trailers back to back.

 

[Robert Crawford]

I saw Endgame in 3D but got the Lion King trailer. And two different Dark Phoenix trailers back to back.

In my 3-D showing I got Aladdin, Dark Phoenix, 21 Bridges and The Secret Life of Pets 2.

 

[Jake Lipson]

My 2D Endgame had exactly what Jeff said it would: The Lion King and Star Wars from Disney were the last two trailers before the feature. No Aladdin or Toy Story 4.

 

[Jeff Adkins]

My AMC Dolby showing played the following trailers:

Gemini Man
Long Shot
Pikachu Detective
Fast And Furious Hobbs And Shaw
Dark Phoenix
Lion King
Star Wars Rise Of Skywalker

 

[Jake Lipson]

While I am glad that Gordon got the teaser on his showing, I still think this is a ridiculous missed opportunity to get the Aladdin trailer in front of a guaranteed huge audience. They blew it by not having the second trailer with Captain Marvel, and they blew it again by not attaching it to all showings of Endgame. If they had to choose only two trailers to attach to all shows of Endgame, as Jeff suggested, The Lion King comes out later in the summer than Aladdin does and therefore should be second priority right now. They could always put The Lion King trailer on the front of Aladdin, but they can't put the Aladdin trailer on the front of anything else because it is their next release. They've missed multiple opportunities to promote this film and I think they may regret it if the numbers come in softer than they want. I hope I am wrong, but we'll see what happens.

 

[Jeff Adkins]

They could always put The Lion King trailer on the front of Aladdin, but they can't put the Aladdin trailer on the front of anything else because it is their next release. They've missed multiple opportunities to promote this film and I think they may regret it if the numbers come in softer than they want. I hope I am wrong, but we'll see what happens.

I'm worried that for whatever reason, they're sort of throwing in the towel on Aladdin and are going all in on Lion King. Perhaps it hasn't done well at test screenings, or maybe the measured mentions on social media are lacking. Hopefully I'm wrong and they'll be a big ad campaign in a few weeks. It's a shame though, because not only could they put the Lion King trailer on Aladdin.....they could also play it in front of Toy Story 4. Even Dark Phoenix (which has a different target demographic) would provide a substantial number of eyeballs.

 

[Jake Lipson]

I'm worried that for whatever reason, they're sort of throwing in the towel on Aladdin and are going all in on Lion King.

It sure feels like that to me too. Aladdin actually interests me quite a bit more than The Lion King does because Aladdin has shown us that it is not a shot-for-shot recreation. But they do seem to have more confidence in The Lion King for sure, and have been doing more to promote it earlier even though it's the later one on the release schedule.

Honestly, I still think they're crazy for even having Aladdin and The Lion King in the same year. We know that their original plan was for Episode IX to be at Memorial Day and for Aladdin to be at Christmas. But when Episode IX needed more time, they decided to put Aladdin at Memorial Day instead. Star Wars at Christmas makes sense, but I don't know why they even felt like they needed to have Aladdin this year. They could have done without a Memorial Day release (a slot which hasn't been kind to them in recent years anyway) and just saved Aladdin for sometime in 2020, where it would have been able to stand out on its own more.

The 2020 has Pixar in non-sequel mode for the first time in a while, plus no Star Wars movie for the first time in five years and only two Marvel titles -- the third would have been Guardians 3 if they hadn't sabotaged that, but they did. So Aladdin could have provided another major recognizable title for the 2020 slate, and would have been able to stand apart from The Lion King and Toy Story 4 there. Instead, they're throwing it into this overcrowded summer for no easily apparent reason.

Don't get me wrong; I'm excited to see it this year. But I can't help but wonder if it would have been better off being held.

 

[Sam Favate]

The Aladdin trailer was not played with the 2D showing of Endgame I saw. Huge missed opportunity.

 

[Jake Lipson]

Entertainment Weekly has an interview with Naomi Scott (Jasmine) and costume designer Michael Wilkinson about Jasmine's outfits.

There are some great new photos in here. There's also a slight spoiler in the paragraph with the heading "Under the Moon," relative to events that occur in a new scene which doesn't have an exact counterpart in the animated film. It's still a good read, but maybe skip over that paragraph if you don't want to know. While I wish I hadn't come across that specific detail, it's minor in the grand scheme of things and demonstrates to me that there are going to be new ideas in this film, so that it's not just a retread, which is good.

Anyway, here's the link:

https://ew.com/movies/2019/04/27/aladdin-jasmine-new-wardrobe/

 

[Jake Lipson]

An update -- sort of -- on the soundtrack situation.

Amazon just listed a pre-order of the soundtrack for Avengers Endgame. It's a physical CD, and it's coming on May 24.

This proves that Disney will still do pre-orders for physical CDs. (And the Disney/Amazon feud has only ever extended to Blu-rays and DVDs, not music or books or anything else, so I feel completely comfortable placing pre-orders there for music.)

However, there's still nothing up for Aladdin. If they do this correctly, a soundtrack for it should be released no later than May 24. The film itself will open with preview screenings on the evening of May 23, so we're looking at a release date of May 17 (if they want to be ahead of the film) or May 24 (if they want to be on the day of the film's official opening.)

For Endgame, you could make the argument that placing the CD after the film has been in theaters for a month allows them to include a track list on the back of the case without spoiling plot developments. I'm not sure if that's actually why it's late, but it's a possible rationale. For Aladdin, though, spoilers from the track list is a virtual impossibility because we all know what Aladdin is, and we all know what most of the the songs are too. Especially because it is a musical, it would make sense for Disney to want the soundtrack to be available when people come out of the theater. (Yes, I know it will be on the streaming services too, but people who are still inclined to make that purchase will want to do it when they've just seen the movie and it's fresh in their mind.)

We'll see what happens. I'm checking daily on Amazon and on Disney's websites for news and will of course post it here when I find something.

In the meantime, the behind-the-scenes book The Art and Making of Aladdin by Emily Zelmer is set to be released Tuesday, and I have it on pre-order with Amazon, so it should ship soon.

 

[benbess]

....In the meantime, the behind-the-scenes book The Art and Making of Aladdin by Emily Zelmer is set to be released Tuesday, and I have it on pre-order with Amazon, so it should ship soon.

Once you've read this book, hope you'll give us a little report on it!++

 

[Jake Lipson]

I noticed on Fandango tonight that some theaters have showtimes listed. They're all greyed out, which means they're not on sale yet, but I suspect tickets are going to go on sale next week sometime, maybe as soon as Monday. It looks like shows will begin at 6pm local time.

Also, the running time is listed as 2 hours and 9 minutes. Coincidentally or not, that is also the exact running time of the Beauty and the Beast live-action remake.

Once you've read this book, hope you'll give us a little report on it!

Of course.

 

[Jake Lipson]

Cinemark.com has a listing for "Aladdin Opening Night Fan Event" starting at 5pm local time on May 23. The only theater around here which currently has a showing scheduled is on the other side of town and is showing it in 3D, so I'll just go in 2D at my close theater, but it exists. No word on what exactly "extra" is with the fan event this time. But it does look like tickets are fixing to go on sale very soon.

3D fans will be happy to note that my AMC IMAX (which I never go to anymore due to issues I have with AMC) is listing IMAX showtimes in both 2D and 3D, so a 3D IMAX run is happening domestically, which hasn't always been the case lately.

 

[Tommy R]

I finally saw the trailer yesterday when I saw Dumbo. This actually looks potentially better than good. I haven’t been giving this movie much thought until now, but I’m definitely going to try to catch this in the theaters now that I’ve seen the trailer. It looks much more fun and fresh (at least as fresh as a remake can be) than The Lion King. I’m going to give that one a hard pass.

 

[Jake Lipson]

It occurred to me tonight that in all the coverage of the movie I've seen (and I've looked for everything I can get my hands on), I have not seen any casting announced or even rumored for the role of Gazeem.

For those of you who may not remember, he is the self-described "humble thief" (and Iago-described "bozo") who Jafar initially convinces to go into the Cave of Wonders in search of the lamp. Here's the 1992 scene:



This scene was very scary for me as a kid, but also really cool. It established that the stakes of the movie were high, and when Jafar responded with indifference to seeing Gazeem eaten in front of him, it made a real statement about just how evil Jafar was.

It's possible that the film could introduce Jafar and the cave in a different way, and Gazeem could be cut out. The Broadway show does not include this scene. Also, ertainly, I am not expecting this to be a beat-for-beat, scene-for-scene recreation of the original, so if they did cut him I wouldn't be shocked or terribly upset. However, it would be cool if they kept him. I recall hearing somewhere (though I can't cite this) that the creators of the original film considered having Aladdin encounter Gazeem's corpse in the Cave later in the film, but they decided not to do that because it was too intense.

It might not be too intense for a PG-rated film, instead of a G-rated one, as long as the corpse wasn't too graphic. So I dunno. That could be a cool touch if indeed he is in there and they decided to use it this time.

On a whim, I decided to tweet to John August (the screenwriter of the new movie) to ask whether Gazeem is there or not. I have no idea if he will respond, or even if he could tell me that without breaking an NDA, but I asked nicely and said how excited I am to see the movie. So, maybe. We'll see if he responds. I'm not sure how much he engages with fans on Twitter, but I figured I might as well take a shot. Obviously, if he responds, I'll say so in here.

It's also possible that an answer could be provided in The Art and Making of Aladdin book coming out Tuesday, if the book contains the complete cast list. I'm really looking forward to getting that.

 

[Jake Lipson]

Disney could have made sure the Aladdin trailer was in front of the two biggest movies of the year so far, but they didn't, so they're now turning to Twitter to promote the movie for them.

As announced by Will Smith in the following video, Disney is making donations to the Make A Wish Foundation if you tweet using the hashtag #FriendLikeMe. Full details are at www.FriendLikeMe.com, but basically it's a $5 donation for every tweet using the hashtag from April 29-May 24 (the opening day of the film) up to $1 million. This works with both Twitter and Instagram.



This is certainly a nice gesture, but I'm not sure it's going to drive that much interest to the film. But charitable donations are always nice, so I'll use the hashtag when I tweet.

On another note, I found Funko Pops now available in the design of the live-action characters. Since there are also older Funkos in the design of the animated characters, the online listings refer to the new ones as "Aladdin Live Action." Here's a Genie one from Amazon that glows in the dark. https://www.amazon.com/Funko-Pop-Disney-Aladdin-Exclusive/dp/B07PGLBYNS/ref=sr_1_1. They also have an Aladdin with Abu set, Jasmine, Jafar, Prince Ali and a regular non-glowing Genie. I've never been into these kinds of toys myself, but I'm glad to know they're out there, since I haven't seen much in the way of merchandise yet, and the promotion has been very lax.

Oh, and, 24 days until Thursday, May 23!

 

[Jake Lipson]

I knew it was happening soon and here it is. Didn't I say likely Monday? Tickets are on sale now. Disney uploaded a cute announcement video with Mena Massoud and Will Smith:



I just bought mine for Thursday, May 23 at 6:00pm in the Cinemark XD auditorium. I hardly ever pay extra to go in there, but Aladdin is a special case. My reserved seat is the first one sold for the screening.

Also, another new TV spot is up, including a larger chunk of Friend Like Me: