From Mickey to Elsa to Captain Hook, more than 500 Disney heroes come back to life in a short film in the form of a love letter to the animation studio, which celebrates its centenary on Monday against a backdrop of turbulence.
Entitled Once upon a time there was a studio, this funny and touching nine-minute work mixing digital images, hand drawings and real shots completes the catalog of the Disney platform, four months after being acclaimed at the Disney Animation Festival. ‘Annecy. The fruit of two years of work, it shows 543 characters, from 85 feature-length and short films, emerging from the paintings displayed in the corridors of the group’s American premises where they gather for a family photo after the departure of the employees.
“It was like doing the biggest puzzle of your life,” summarizes for AFP Trent Corey, co-director of this artistic and technological feat which mobilized more than a hundred people, as well as former animators and 40 actors. income especially for the occasion. “We wanted all the characters to look and have the exact same voice as in their original films,” adds co-creator Dan Abraham, who also relied on a previously unreleased recording by Robin Williams, who played the genie of Aladdin in English, died in 2014.
The directors wanted the iconic genius of Robin Williams to be part of the adventure, reports Variety. “Dan Abraham listened to extracts from the original recording and he found these little extracts that we used,” producer Bradford Simonsen told our American colleagues. The creators revived the voice of the late actor without using artificial intelligence.
Enough to restore the nobility of traditional animation, definitively replaced by 3D for Disney feature films since Winnie the Pooh in 2011. “Of the 543 characters in the film, around 450 are drawn by hand”, in pencil on paper, indicates designer Eric Goldberg (Aladdin, Pocahontas), who supervised the 2D part of the film. “We didn’t take anything from existing films,” whether in 3D or 2D, “so it was technically difficult,” he concedes.
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The film also pays homage to the nearly 70 years of home of animator Burny Mattinson, who died in February, as well as to Mary Poppins composer Richard Sherman, who, at 94, revisited Walt Disney’s favorite, Feed the P ‘little birds. “Everyone wanted to be in it!” assures Dan Abraham.
Concerts, exhibitions… The entertainment giant is stepping up its celebrations for its centenary, the highlight of which will be the theatrical release in November of the film Wish, Asha and the Lucky Star, inspired by Disney classics. But the release of the short film coincides with the date considered to be the founding of the Walt Disney Company.
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It was on October 16 that Walt Disney and his brother Roy – who started Disney Brothers Studios in a Hollywood garage – signed a decisive distribution contract for their Alice comedies, short films following a little girl in the flesh in a lively world. The character of Mickey only appeared in 1928, in response to Universal’s control of the rights of his predecessor, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, who had fallen into oblivion. “It’s really 100 years where we look back and say thank you to the people with whom we worked (…) and to our fans,” insists the French president of Disney, Hélène Etzi, to AFP, recalling that The entertainment empire was established in France in 1934 with Le Journal de Mickey.
The fact remains that the Californian company, which has taken over Pixar, Star Wars and Marvel in the 21st century, is going through a turbulent period. Faced with the decline in the number of Disney subscribers, the big-eared firm has notably undertaken to cut 7,000 jobs to save money, while the historic actors’ strike in Hollywood continues.
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Fierce anti-unionist, regularly accused of racism or misogyny, the emblematic founder of the eponymous group has lost its splendor, even if certain detractors now criticize the progressive positions (“woke”) of the brand, which chose a black actress for its remake of The Little Mermaid. In all cases, “Disney films resonate with everyone,” says Eric Goldberg, emphasizing that they are often the first seen in childhood at the cinema. “Their characters and their stories have given a lot of joy and hope (…) and, hopefully,” this will continue “for another 100 years.”
