Aladdin

Disney has released a teaser trailer for next summer’s live-action remake of ‘Aladdin’ and at least one viewer of the clip is not enchanted.  Terry Rossio, is one of 18 (EIGHTEEN!!!) writers credited for writing the script of the original 1992 animated classic and he definitely noticed that the few lines of dialogue in the trailer are lifted directly from the original, despite none of the (EIGHTEEN!!!) writers of the original received financial compensation for the new film.

Rossio took to Twitter to air his grievance:

According to IMDB, Rossio, along with Ron Clements, Ted Elliott and John Musker, do get credit for penning the original screenplay.  (The other fourteen were credited for simply contributing to the Story.)  But because of the original agreement for their work, these writers are not entitled to royalties, as he further explained.

Rossio also worked on the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ movies and stated that they were offered a lifetime pass to Disney parks, around the time that Shanghai Disney opened with an entire land devoted to ‘Pirates’, but that those were revoked.

But it seems that large companies like this have pretty iron-clad contracts when it comes to work-for-hire.  It still kinda sucks.

Here is the trailer in question:

 

‘Aladdin’ was directed by Guy Ritchie, who also contributed to the new script along with frequent Tim Burton collaborator John August (‘Frankenweenie’, ‘Big Fish’, ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’).  Mena Massoud, who has a regular role on Amazon’s new ‘Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan’ series, portrays the titular hero, while ‘Power Rangers” Naomi Scott plays Jasmine.  Marwan Kenzari (‘Murder on the Orient Express’) portrays Jafar, while Will Smith takes over for the legendary Robin Williams as the Genie.  The cast also includes Numan Acar, Billy Magnussen, Navid Negahban, Nasim Pedrad, and Priyanka Samra.  Despite earlier rumors, as shown in the trailer Iago is a part of the movies, as are Aby and Raja.

Guy Ritchie’s ‘Aladdin’ will magically appear n theaters on May 24, 2019.

Source: iO9