The Tad Stones Interview — Part 3
Aladdin, Iago and the Birth of Direct to Video Sequels JS: Whose idea was it to turn Aladdin into a series?
TS: It was kind of a no-brainer; you had this movie that made $150 million. Some of the episodes I loved more than others, the ones that had more of an Arabian Nights feel.
I had been thinking that while the genie is great, he's not a normal character. He's crazy because he was Robin Williams who could bring in all this Warner Bros. craziness into a Disney show. Few people realize that even before he shows up, Aladdin is a great movie. I thought Iago was a great character, he was funny, and mean, and Gilbert Gottfried's voice fit perfectly. I said "I want the parrot in there," but he was trapped in the lamp [at the end of the Aladdin movie], so we came up with a story of how he got out and ended up with Aladdin.
The big history-making thing that came out of the show was up to that time we would always do a four or five-part special that would be played vertically as a movie like on a Friday night, and then on Monday the series would start. Some were more episodic than others. I called up the Disney home video division and said, "By definition I'm doing a sequel to Aladdin; are you guys interested? They said "No, not really." We don't want to make a few hundred million more, right? Then they released Aladdin. It was huge, obviously. I called them again and reminded them we were doing the sequel to Aladdin. If we got it done in time, it could be out a few months before the series premiered. This time they said, "We'll get back to you."
Return of Jafar was made for about $3.5 million. It made more than $100 million domestically and created the home video market for Disney. Arguably — and I won't deny this — it probably played a hand in killing off Disney features in that now there's a lot of animation out there on video shelves. If you're a parent you're saying, "Do I buy tickets to the movie, or do I buy the new video that they can watch a hundred times?"
Anyway, our film was always intended as a feature-length story —
JS: — that set up the premise for the series.
TS: Exactly, and it did fantastic. Now at the time I was told that Peter Schneider, who was in charge of Feature Animation was at a meeting with Michael Eisner. Peter said, "You shouldn't do sequels, their quality hurts the Disney reputation," and Michael said, "I'm not sure we should be doing these either." The next part of the meeting was, "It cost $3.5 million to make and made over $100 million. Well, what should the next one be?"
TS: Now Aladdin was done by my good friends Ron Clements and John Musker. The studio had already done a Little Mermaid series so Aladdin wouldn't be the one to be adapted, but that was 13 episodes and this was going to be 65.
JS: End of discussion.
TS: You can make the creative argument that Michael should have stuck by his guns and said, "No, it hurts the Disney name." When people say he's not listening to stockholders, well do you really want a stockholder to know that you said no to doing more of something that cost a pittance and made a fortune? When the argument is made that the management isn't listening to the stockholders, in some perverse way I say they're listening to them too much.
JS: I think where they went astray was trying to come up with a sequel for every film whether it called for it or not.
TS: In general terms I would say the technical side very quickly got incredibly good. It comes down to, like everything else, story and character. The people involved think they're doing a great job, other people think they're not doing too well. It is what it is — I've never gotten really upset with it. I'm not particularly fond of Return of Jafar, I don't even own a copy of it. I like the second sequel [Aladdin and the King of Thieves] with Robin Williams much better. I just felt we were so rushed that the story wasn't as strong as it could've been.
Printer-friendly version
bXDJnrz
Post new comment