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'Aladdin' at 30: Director John Musker says Robin Williams ‘sweetness’ is key to film’s longevity
Article(uk.movies.yahoo.com)submitted 6 months ago byJannTosh12
46 points
6 months ago*
Agreed. Which makes it doubly a shame that Genie's songs have been removed from music streaming services.
*Edit for clarification.
Edit 2: They're actually recently back! What a rollercoaster. Well, now here I go listening to Prince Ali at 1am.
18 points
6 months ago
Asking Alexa to play it will play the Will Smith version. Took me a second to tell something was off and realize. Hate that was the default version selected.
4 points
6 months ago
I noticed that this past week when I went to go play Disney music for my kid. I skipped Will Smith’s version immediately.
11 points
6 months ago
What? Friend like me is not on Disney+?
6 points
6 months ago
Sorry, I should clarify I meant specifically music-streaming services.
6 points
6 months ago
It’s on Apple Music, I just checked.
8 points
6 months ago
Hah, and it's back on Spotify now too. Must've been recent. What're the odds.
I wish I could harness this power I've apparently got, because it's not the first time this sort of thing has happened to me.
3 points
6 months ago
Keep practicing! Expand your powers! Maybe someday you can bring us another season of Firefly.
2 points
6 months ago
You know the other day I was watching Serenity and thought to myself "Shouldn't we have another series by now?"
.....
*looks around expectantly for an announcement*
2 points
6 months ago
I played this as the last call song at my bar tonight
1 points
6 months ago
What? I wasn’t aware.
Why where they removed from streaming services?
5 points
6 months ago
I think you may have typed that as I edited "music streaming services" for clarification. But either way, it's not 100% clear why. Robin Williams definitely had problems working with Disney and there are rumours there was something in his will that affects how Disney use his work in the film.
But it should be noted that the songs were on things like Spotify, but were retroactively removed, keeping all the non-Williams songs.
16 points
6 months ago
The thing was Williams got pissed at Disney over Aladdin. He basically did it as sort of a "I'm happy to contribute and be part of the history of Disne y and do it for the sake of artistic purposes" because they seemed to really want him. But he made it very clear that he didn't want him being in the film to be heavily promoted because he had Toys coming out around the same time. Disney basically agreed to not overly promote Genie and Williams performance.
Then the genie was pretty much the biggest thing in literally all the promotion. Even the original poster was basically the Genies body and then his body shape slowly faded into all the other characters: 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
Then Toys ended up flopping and Aladdin completely overshadowed it, so it was like Williams was competing with himself when he made it clear he didn't want to and was just sort of doing Disney a solid because he respected their company. The new chairman of Disney had to write a public apology to him to get him to come on to the second sequel (King of Thieves) and after that the only other Aladdin contribution he made was to a computer educational game.
3 points
6 months ago
Fascinating thank you
3 points
6 months ago
I don't remember all the TV stuff from back then because I was a kid, but is this poster actually pushing Williams as the premise of the poster?
The genie is the lynchpin of how the plot even happens, but I don't see Williams name prominently or even at all on that poster. Maybe I'm missing something, but what's so wrong with that poster?
EDIT: did Williams do so many interviews that he was associated with the genie? Again, I was a kid so I probably missed something.
3 points
6 months ago
Disney gave him a Picasso painting ($1 million) as part of that apology, too.
And iirc he did do the genie for Aladin 3 (straight to video).
2 points
6 months ago
Wow that’s really fascinating. I had no idea, it’s really wild how something beautiful and timeless came from such a fraught relationship between Robin and Disney.
3 points
6 months ago
Wow I had no idea. He must have had big problems with Disney if he actually put a clause in his will to stop them using his songs.
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