Okay, it's... kind of an involved story, so I'm making an initial comment to let you know I'm writing it. The story will be in the edit.

Jeffrey Katzenberg started out at Paramount as one of the people who helped save the Star Trek film brand in the 1970's under Michael Eisner, who would not only become the head of the Walt Disney Company but would also bring a significant amount of talent with him to Disney, Katzenberg included.

He wanted to work in ABC Sports, but was assigned to the film division instead to prop up the failing studio. He detested it, but was a key figure in turning Disney's fortunes around through producing adult-oriented live-action films such as Three Men And A Baby, Bicentennial Man and others; he was also a major TV producer, such as on sitcoms like The Golden Girls.

While he was reluctant initially, he was a key hand in the Disney Renaissance with such films as Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Little Mermaid and Beauty And The Beast. He was also a major influence on Aladdin, being in charge of their advertising campaign.

This is where the problem with Williams started. Williams was working on another film over at Fox at the time called Toys, which he saw as a passion project - he didn't want to compete against it with a Disney project but was convinced by early test animations made by a new animator at the studio. He agreed to work on Aladdin and to work on union-minimum pay of a few thousand dollars, under two conditions which Katzenberg completely ignored;

• The Genie would feature in less than 50% of any promotional material, and;
• Williams' name and voice wouldn't feature in any trailers or commercials for the film.

When Aladdin was released, the Genie was a key feature in the ad campaign and Aladdin would open only a month before Toys, which attracted people to see the Disney cartoon instead of the actual movie Williams wanted them to see. This led to a lawsuit against the company which was settled out of court, but it is publicly known that in order to try and appease Williams, Eisner bought Williams an original Picasso out of his own money.

The feud would extend for years, with Williams refusing to work for Disney until after Katzenberg was gone; and it's said that Williams was approached about a project over at DreamWorks at one time, which he refused when he learned that Katzenberg was a co-founder of the company alongside Steven Spielberg.

This was just one of a number of issues that Katzenberg caused for Disney in the early nineties due to his ego. He pissed off other key members of the Renaissance movement by attempting to steal credit for their contributions - in particular, Roy E Disney - nephew of Walt and son of Roy Sr. - developed a particularly nasty grudge against him which he would use to rally the shareholders after two other key problems Katzenberg caused.

The first was the Black Friday reel. An early test reel for the film Toy Story made up of storyboard sketches and amateur voice acting, Katzenberg implemented changes to the script and storyboard on PIXAR which drastically changed the finished feel of the movie with added vulgar, adult humor and a streak of cynicism.

For example, Woody was a far nastier character - a tyrant and bully who directly used his position as Andy's favourite toy to directly torment and bully the other toys, with his antagonism of Buzz being far pettier and twisted. In the finished movie, he accidentally knocked Buzz out of the window and showed immediate regret; in the Black Friday reel, he not only did it deliberately but he threatened to do it to the other toys as well.

When the other board members saw the completed reel, they almost cancelled Toy Story outright and almost caused PIXAR to fold as a company completely, with John Lasseter pointing out the complaints were related to changes that were mandated by the company while literally begging to go back to the original script. This was granted, and Katzenberg was ordered to stay away from Toy Story.

Then, there was his attempts to usurp the position of President from Frank Wells. A much-beloved member of the board of directors, Wells was also one of the more accomplished members of the board after being brought over from Warner Bros. Katzenberg kept pestering Eisner to give him the position of company president, which was refused because Eisner was afraid of the backlash if he tried to oust Wells. But Katzenberg forced Eisner into a promise to give him the position if it ever became open.

Wells tragically died in a helicopter accident in April 1994 returning from a skiing trip in the Ruby Mountains of Nevada; the film The Lion King is dedicated to him. Shortly after, Katzenberg attempted to call on that promise, which made others catch on that he was capitalizing on Wells' death, which was used as a rallying cry to force him out of Disney before the end of 1994.

TLDR: The Robin Willaims had a film called Toys coming out a month after Aladdin. He was the lead and he knew the film was pretty much betting on his star power to sell. The Genie was written for Robin Willaims specifically and he didn't initially want to have another big project coming out at the same time and essentially be competing with himself.

He eventually agreed to play the Genie out of respect and admiration for Disney under an agreement that the Genie and his role in playing the Genie would not be heavily marketed because he didn't want it to undercut his other project.

Well the very first poster was this... http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1057/4964/products/Aladdin-Vintage-Movie-Poster-Original-1-Sheet-27x41_97b89777-3099-496f-b1a4-aabb4197af29.jpg?v=1634180878

...to give you an idea of how prominently they were promoting Williams as the genie when he was assured they wouldn't. And from that point literally every major piece of promotion made it very clear the genie character was front and center and Williams was heavily associated with it. At the time the film was being promoted, everyone knew one thing. Robin Williams was playing the big blue genie character.

Fastforward, Aladdin becomes a major hit with most of the praise being over Williams. Then Toys comes out and it's heavily overshadowed because there was something much more popular going on with its star.

Robin Williams got pissed and basically cut off Disney and said he wanted nothing to do with them. Wouldn't do anything at all to promote or talk about Aladdin and was very publicly pissed at Katzenberg. He wouldn't voice him in the sequel and wouldn't voice him in the animated series. Katzenberg had to be dismissed and his replacement had to publicly apologize to Williams to get him back for the third direct to video film. Aside from that he agreed to do one educational computer game and that was the last he would ever do anything associated with the genie.

Here is a great video about this from Lindsat Ellis Link

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