i found out that Robin Williams was paid $75,000 for voicing the Genie in Aladdin, which went on to gross over $504 million worldwide.
Disney later sent him a late Picasso painting (estimated at the time to be worth $1 million) as a way of thanking him for his work.
Yeah and he was so furious about the way that disney treated him that he refused to accept the painting. Disney completely fucked him over because disney doesn’t care about anything other than making money.
Before he was scouted for aladdin he was working on a passion project (ferngully) when disney caught wind of the fact that a smaller animation studio had got comedian smash hit robbin williams. They tried at first to get him to only work on aladdin but robin refused to stop working on ferngully. Disney didn’t like that so they actively sabotaged the production of ferngully by doing things like renting out locations which the ferngully team had already paid to use, but nobody can turn down disney money.
There’s a good reason why robin refused to voice the genie in aladdin 2 or any of the videogames he appeared in. Fuck disney
Dude, we got Aladin out of it. That’s worth destroying some random project that probably wasn’t going to be any good in the first place.
EXCUSE YOU?! Ferngully is a fucking MASTERPIECE.
There is no way on earth some b list indie movie is better than aladdin, a contender for best animated movie ever.
Indie movie? Not only is it a good film, it was produced by 20th Century Fox, one of the biggest film studios on the planet at the time. Why do people assume that any animated film not made by Disney must automatically be inferior? There are plenty of creative voices out there that just don’t fit in with the Mouse Monolith.
Anyway, there’s a reason why Robin Williams was only paid $75k to play the Genie: he actually refused a multi-million dollar offer and took a pay cut in exchange for Disney’s promise that they wouldn’t use his name or the Genie character to promote the film. Williams hated the idea of his name and voice being used to sell merchandise to kids, thinking that it was predatory and that it cheapened animation as an art form. So he asked Disney to promise not to put his name in any ads, and only give the Genie a small spot on the film poster. How’d that work out?
YEAH, NOT GREAT.
This is the original theatrical poster. It’s pretty much the complete opposite of what Williams was promised by Disney. The ad campaign hyped the hell out of Williams being in the movie: if you look at the old TV ads, Aladdin himself is barely in them, it’s pretty much a Genie sizzle reel. And of course, they made an Mt. Everest’s worth of Genie merchandise and marketed it directly to kids. Williams was livid, and refused to work on any Disney project for years (which was right around the time that he became the hottest comedian in Hollywood. Disney played themselves.) That’s why Genie is voiced by another actor in the sequel and the subsequent Aladdin TV series.
Four years later, Williams patched things up with Disney (after one of their top execs publicly apologized to him) and he agreed to play the Genie in the direct-to-video film Aladdin and the King of Thieves. This time, he didn’t even bother trying to appeal to Disney’s good faith: he took a million dollar payday, at that point the biggest payment an actor had ever received for a direct-to-video film. And he agreed to let them use his name in advertising, which Disney was not shy about: the words “starring Robin Williams” are PART OF THE FILM’S LOGO.
I had to reblog this addition, because brand loyalty amazes me. ‘Disney’s name is on it, so it HAS to be superior.’ Smh
Yeah I’m reblogging this version too because damn. Fuck you Disney
Also even if somehow Aladdin really was the absolute best movie ever created, that doesn’t excuse Disney acting like dicks to get it made? This dude’s position is honest to God just “I don’t care they treated him like crap, I like the movie.” Wow.
reblogging this more because of fury at some chucklefuck calling ferngully indie, fuck you, ferngully is amazing
