Ahead of Disney's 100th anniversary celebration, Disney drops the trailer for upcoming short film, Once Upon a Studio.
With a host of characters being reunited for the project, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter, the trailer for Once Upon a Studio makes viewers fall in love with the magic of Disney all over again. Opening on an empty Disney animation building, Mickey and Minnie Mouse leap from their picture frames with the help of Tinkerbell. As the camera traverses around the building, characters spanning Disney's long and storied lifetime come to life themselves and huddle together for a photo.
Disney's audiences are sure to recognize not only the characters themselves, but a plethora of the voice actors that accompany them; from Sleeping Beauty's fairy godmothers' bickering to Winnie the Pooh's classic "oh, bother," Disney recalls some of the most memorable lines from the studio. Over 40 voice actors returned for the film, including Josh Gad as Frozen's Olaf and Dwayne Johnson as Moana's Maui - two huge actors and Disney characters in their own right. With characters from every era of Disney, both hand-drawn and computer generated, the trailer is a massive wave of nostalgia for Disney fans of any age.
In total, the trailer depicts 543 characters, across over 85 films - both feature-length and short films. As Disney states, "Once Upon a Studio welcomes heroes and villains, princes and princesses, sidekicks and sorcerers...to celebrate 10 decades of storytelling, artistry, and technological achievements." Filmmakers of Once Upon a Studio also went on to ensure audiences that all animation in the film is in fact brand new, as is the voice acting - with the exception of some archival sound used for Jiminy Cricket of Pinocchio, voiced by Cliff Edwards in 1940. In a heartwarming reunion, Robin Williams' Genie from Aladdin will be featured, utilizing unused clips from the original film.
Once Upon a Studio Can Be Seen on the Big Screen
Considering Disney's role in the current WGA and SAG-AFTRA strike, the high quality level of animation present in Once Upon a Studio is hard to deny; with both Marvel and Walt Disney Studios VFX workers unionizing, it is unclear what the future for Disney and Disney-owned visual effects may look like as a result of the strike.
The film premiered in June at the Annecy Film Festival, but will be aired on Oct. 15 for ABC's The Wonderful World of Disney: Disney’s 100th Anniversary Celebration. Once Upon a Studio will also be the short film preceding Disney's newest movie Wish, starring Ariana DeBose as Asha, premiering Nov. 22.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter