That's Robin Williams' Real Voice in the Disney+ Short Special ONCE UPON A STUDIO
An endearing 9-minute short has been released this week on Disney+ titled Once Upon a Studio, which follows many of our favorite animated characters from the past century as they gather at the studio to take a group photo in celebration of 100 years of Disney Studios.
The short is nostalgic for any Disney fan that grew up watching the animated classics and the contemporary favorites. One of the coolest parts of it is that the short film is narrated by Robin Williams, as his beloved Aladdin character, Genie. This wasn’t created by AI either, his voice was taken from his former Disney project and reused for this special.
The project’s producer, Yvett Merino, shared the following about making this happen and involving Williams’ family in the process:
“Robin Williams is very special. And of course, Genie is one of our special iconic characters. We worked closely with the Williams estate to make sure that they were along for the journey. We pitched them the film and they loved it. We pitched it in board, so they saw it very early on. And the recording that you hear is actually one of the recordings [from Aladdin outtakes].”
Co-writer and director Trent Correy further explained the process that went into using the familiar faces and voices in the short.
“[Our] legal team, whether it was using the look of a character or the sound, they went to extreme efforts to do that and we absolutely went to the estate right away to get proper permission for all the characters.”
Dan Abraham, the other half of the filmmaking team, was up to the task of scouring Robin Williams’ Aladdin booth recording outtakes.
“[There were] 16 hours of footage of them recording Robin for the Genie. And every time he would say something that they didn’t use, I would go back into my Disney Rolodex in my head and be like, ‘Oh!’ and I would write down the time code and the line. We wanted to piece together a moment between [Frozen character] Olaf and the Genie. And so we just came up with the scenario and the dialogue, and it goes by real quick.”
This looks and sounds like it’s going to be really special. I can’t wait to watch it with my kids this week. Check out the trailer for the short below, and you can watch Once Upon a Studio on Disney+.
via: Gizmodo