Aladdin (2019)

After viewing the trailer a few more times, some additional observations:

1) In the end of it where we briefly see the credits, NEW LYRICS BY BENJ PASEK & JUSTIN PAUL is listed above LYRICS BY HOWARD ASHMAN & TIM RICE. We already knew that Pasek and Paul were doing new lyrics, although I'm a bit surprised, since they are the newcomers to the project, that they would be listed ahead of Ashman and Rice.

2) Screenplay credit is listed as John August and Guy Ritchie. But Disney previously hired Vanessa Taylor (who co-wrote The Shape of Water) to do a rewritre on August's script. Since she's not credited, I wonder if they tossed her script.

3) Who is doing the voice of the Cave? It sounds extremely similar to the 1992 version, where the voice of the Cave was provided by Frank Welker, who also voiced Abu and Rajah (we still need to know if they're in this film or not) , and that dialogue for the Cave is exactly the same as in the scene from the original when Jafar sends Gazeem in to get the lamp.

4) I'm actually kind of impressed that Disney is keeping the Genie in the lamp for now. Since Smith is the only recognizable movie star actor in the film, I kind of expected him to immediately be the focus of the marketing out of the gate. Doing it this way will make people even more curious to see him whenever they let him out in a future trailer. He's getting in-front-of-the-title billing in the credits at the end of the trailer, but has no presence in this trailer at all. Good on Disney for being restrained in not showing him this early.

5) I just want to reiterate that we now know that Iago is in it. I almost screamed at my computer when I saw him. Just that confirmation would have been enough to thrill me tonight even if the rest of it hadn't been good.

6) That lamp definitely looks super fancy and not like a "beat-up, worthless piece of junk." I always kind of liked the symbolism, which ties into the diamond in the rough angle, of the lamp looking plain and ordinary but having inside it the Genie with all his awesome power. I guess they just wanted to go for a fancy lamp and ignored that point. Oh well. It still looks nice.

Can you all tell I'm excited?

 

Yeah, I noticed that too. They can do what they want -- it's their movie -- but you'd think after opening both Infinity War and, before that, The Jungle Book in April, they would figure out that any month can produce big grosses with the right product being put there. And I really do think they're setting themselves up to make less money than they otherwise would by releasing all of these in such a scrunched-up period.

That being said, next year they don't have nearly as large of a gap between releases in the fall; Artemis Fowl is August 9 and Jungle Cruise is October 11, so they're only skipping September in that window.

On another note, Terry Rossio (who of course co-wrote the original animated Aladdin film with his then-writing partner Ted Elliot and the film's directors) had this to say about the remake trailer on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/TerryRossio/status/1050617901688872962

 

I'm not aware of the specifics on Aladdin and I could be misinformed, so I want to state outright that this is what I believe to be the case, but I am by no means a Hollywood insider or anything. But this is what I understand based on what I've heard about the topic in the past.

I don't think so on animated films, where they would have if the original were a live-action film. (A Star is Born credited the writers of previous versions.)

I also don't want to put words in his mouth, but I think Rossio's point is that they should but they don't. I know Linda Wolverton didn't get any credit on Beauty and the Beast last year either, even though the remake was very clearly modeled on her original work for the animated film. The WGA doesn't get involved in animated films. But the issue here would seem to be that the original writers of the animated one would get residuals on the grosses of the remake if they received credit on the remake, but since they don't have screen credit, they get nothing despite having created the characters. John August and Linda Woolverton did a podcast about this a few months ago.

The screenplay credit at the end of the trailer says "Written by John August and Guy Ritchie." But it is using (probably) a substantial amount of material written for the original, so if the original had been a live-action film supervised by the WGA, the remake credit would say "Written by John August and Guy Ritchie based on the 1992 screenplay by Ron Clements & John Musker and Ted Elliot & Terry Rossio," and the those four would receive residuals under those circumstances. But since it wasn't under the WGA, as animated films never are, they don't have to get credit and therefore don't get residual payments on the remake.

Here is the link to the podcast with John August and Linda Wolverton talking about writing animated movies where this comes up and from which I am basing my theoretical information in this post. For anyone interested in the process of writing animation or how writers are paid for it, it's a really interesting listen.

https://johnaugust.com/2018/writing-animated-movies

 

Terry Rossio has been talking more about this on Twitter with people who responded to his tweet. One person asked if the studio owns the content and if they owe him anything.

He wrote:

I responded to his original tweet earlier this morning:

He responded to me directly (!) and said:

You can see all this on his Twitter or follow him there at https://twitter.com/TerryRossio if you're interested.

 

Yes, absolutely, and always has been. I would not make that up or lie to flatter him.

 

Disney has had less success over the Memorial Day slot than almost any other slot they regularly use over the past several years (Solo, Alice Through the Looking Glass, Tomorrowland, Prince of Persia.) Even Pirates 5 was way lower than the previous installments. It will be interesting to see how Aladdin does here.

 

I agee it wasn't the best. However, I think the job of this trailer is primarily to tell general audiences (the kind of people who don't follow industry news like we do "Hey, remember Aladdin? We made it again and it's coming out next summer." In that regard, it succeeds, and I think/hope the next trailer will make more of an impression once they're ready to show us a little more.

 

Robin Williams' issue with Disney had nothing to do with compensation so far as I understand it. He had to have known that the film was going to be 90 minutes and that all of his material would not be used. He wasn't an idiot and he knew how movies are made.

The issue is that Aladdin was being released around the same time as another family film he was starring in, Toys, and he felt that he was obligated to that film first because he had signed to it first. He agreed to do Aladdin if it was written into the contract that the Genie wasn't to be used in the marketing for it, because he wanted to be loyal to Toys. The problem was that test audiences were responding more to the Genie than anything else, which was the one element Disney couldn't use to promote the movie. Eventually, Williams agreed that the Genie could be used in 33% of any poster or trailer or marketing thing for Aladdin because he is in 33% of the film. Disney ran with this and put Genie in 33% of the final poster -- but Genie towered over the rest of the cast, including Aladdin and Jasmine, so even though he is technically only covering 33% of it, it was clearly a violation of the spirit of the agreement. They eventually started using Genie in other ways, like posters devoted entirely to him, in spite of the agreement. Then Aladdin became the #1 movie of the year and Toys bombed.

This was the source of Williams' beef with Disney over the film.

I've known this for so many years that I don't remember where I first read it, but I don't think his issue had anything to do with the creative direction of the film at all.