Credit: Far Out / YouTube Still / Universal Pictures

Robin Williams appears as The Genie in new Disney short

Mon 16 October 2023 14:34, UK

Disney has brought back the late Robin Williams in the role of The Genie from Aladdin for a new short. The film has been released to celebrate the company’s 100th birthday.

Despite Williams passing away in 2014, Disney have successfully managed to use voice recordings made by the actor for the 1992 film, which weren’t previously used. They have cooperated with his estate throughout the making of the short, which is part of their Once Upon A Studio series, which is a collection of 85 new films available to stream on Disney+.

Notably, they refrained from using artificial intelligence for Williams’ character. “We tried to take them on the journey with us to say, ‘We’ve got this very special short that we’re doing. Robin as the genie means so much to so many people and we would really love to involve him,'” producer Bradford Simonsen said in a new interview.

He told Variety: “So, [director] Dan [Abraham] listened to the outtakes from the original recording and he found those little bites that we could use,” said Simonsen. “We went back to the estate and said, ‘This is what we hope to do.’ Eric [Goldberg], who originally animated the genie is on the show, and he’s going to be part of it.’ And it was wonderful to see that happen.”

Simonsen also said: “It needed to feel that so the audience response would be visceral. We used our animation research library where we pulled out model sheets for the animators to work from. We had Eric Goldberg who has the studio history, and we did tests to make sure it was all working together in the scenes.”

Many voice actors reprised their roles for the new set of shorts, including Jodi Benson as Ariel, Jeremy Irons as The Lion King‘s Scar and Auli’i Cravalho as Moana. Frozen’s Idina Menzel and Kristen Bell also lent their voice to Once Upon A Studio.

Earlier this month, Williams’ daughter Zelda, spoke out against “disturbing” AI technology recently used to recreate her father’s voice.

“I am not an impartial voice in SAG’s fight against AI,” Zelda wrote in a statement posted on Instagram Stories. “I’ve witnessed for YEARS how many people want to train these models to create/recreate actors who cannot consent, like Dad. This isn’t theoretical, it is very very real.”

Watch the trailer for Once Upon A Studio below.