Debuting Sunday night during The Wonderful World of Disney: Disney’s 100th Anniversary Celebration special on ABC, the new animated short Once Upon a Studio commemorates The Walt Disney Company’s 100th anniversary with a rather staggering collection of animated characters appearing together in an appropriately heartwarming manner. The brainchild of writer/directors Trent Correy & Dan Abraham (Once Upon a Snowman), the short – running around nine minutes – depicts Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse gathering together their fellow animated characters inside the Disney Animation building in order to take a group photo.
I was present for a screening of Once Upon a Studio at a recent press event at the El Capitan theater in Los Angeles – during which we also were shown early footage from the 100th anniversary feature length Walt Disney Animation Studios release Wish – where the short played exceptionally well, receiving huge applause and garnering plenty of tears, as it had at a couple of other early screenings for fans.
A few days after that El Capitan screening, I spoke to Correy and Abraham about the unusual way the short came together, how they decided which characters would be in it, some deep cuts included, blending wildly different animation styles together, and the true Disney Legends that contributed to Once Upon a Studio.
THE PITCH
Initially, Trent Correy and Dan Abraham simply wanted to work together again, with Correy noting, “We had such a blast making Once Upon a Snowman, about a year earlier, that we’re like, ‘How do we do that again?’ And it started off as just trading ideas back and forth, trading inspiration, things that we’d seen. And then a couple of drawings here and there.’
Ultimately, in Once Upon a Studio, all the Disney characters would step out from picture frames in order to take their photo together and Abraham recalled that one early drawing he did was “Winnie the Pooh being stuck in the picture frame and Christopher Robin and all of them pulling him out. Because if they’re all going to be jumping out of the picture frames, who’s gonna who’s gonna get stuck? It’s gonna be Pooh Bear.”
As the two discussed ideas, Abraham recalled, “We realized that the 100 year [anniversary] was coming up. And so we thought, ‘Man, nobody seems to be doing anything about the legacy part of this.’ Wish was going to be the feature for that year and take us into the future.”
The two then continued to develop the full idea for the short, all while keeping quiet about it for eight full months, working on it at night and on weekends, wanting to hone the concept before they actually pitched it to Walt Disney Animation Studios CCO Jennifer Lee. By the time that pitch occurred, Abraham explained, “It was all drawings. It was all storyboards. And we sat down with her over zoom, and I pitched through the boards and did all the voices and sound effects and all that. And then I had to sing at the end. And she said, ‘I don’t know how, but we have to figure out how to make this.'”
“It was unreal, because it was a shot in the dark,” he continued. “There are a lot of components. We didn’t know if the studio had people that were capable of doing it right now, because they’re on other projects and a million different reasons why… You know how Hollywood works. It seems like in order for anything to get made, all the planets have to align. And it’s just so easy to say no, instead of saying yes, and then figuring it out. But Jennifer Lee said, ‘Yes, we are making this’ so that was really cool.’
Noted Corey, “The boards that we pitched there, to Dan’s point… The short didn’t change that much after that! It got tighter and we swapped out characters, but structurally, that was the short. So what we pitched to Jen was pretty elaborate.”
CHOOSING THE CHARACTERS
There were some easy choices for characters that simply had to be in the short, starting with Mickey & Minnie and their pals like Donald Duck and Goofy. Beyond that though, Abraham said, “We knew that we were gonna represent all 62 of our [Walt Disney Animation Studios] features, from Snow White to our upcoming Wish, and then as many shorts and specials and things as we possibly could. And so we just started diving in knowing that not everybody was gonna make it. Not all the secondary characters and stuff, which broke our hearts. We kept trying constantly to add more and more and more, but our producers were like, ‘Wait, wait, wait. We gotta make this thing; you gotta pull back!’”
There are the Disney animated characters that have become mainstays but what about the ones that don’t pop up that much these days and deciding who would make the cut for the short? As Abraham put it, “You still see Stitch and Ariel and Cinderella quite often. But there’s somebody out there that loves Johnny Appleseed. And they love Chicken Little or they love whoever. And so we wanted those guys to get to see their friends too, because it’s been a while for Johnny Appleseed or whoever. So we did our best to get as many sort of obscure, if you want to say that… But to somebody, Johnny Appleseed is not obscure! They’ve gotten a Johnny Appleseed tattoo on their thigh to prove it!”
I’d mentioned how happy I was to see both Mr. Toad and Ichabod Crane from 1949’s The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad in the short, and when it came to those sort of characters some might consider deeper cuts, Correy remarked, “We realized as we were onboarding people that they’d share stories, and depending on when you grew up, or which movie you watched with your Grandma, that nostalgia ran deep. I’m right there with you with Ichabod Crane and having him in there was pretty cool, because he is a deep dive to some people and then I was lucky enough to get to animate him too. Eric Goldberg allowed me the chance to animate him. So that was a fun character to have.”
Added Abraham, “When we got greenlit and Jen said we’re going to make this, Trent and I threw everything in and just piled every shot with tons and tons of characters. But we realized we were going to have to pull back in order to actually make it. And so we did a complexity pass and we had to get rid of certain characters. And at one point, it was brought up in one of the shots that, ‘You know what, we don’t need Eeyore and Rabbit and Piglet and Gopher. Let’s maybe get rid of Gopher,’ and I’m like ‘No, I want to keep Gopher!’ I said he didn’t make it into the 2011 Winnie the Pooh and Winnie the Pooh is just so special to me. And so, jokingly, I kept sending emails and texts and things with #savegopher. Just because I really wanted him in there. And he’s there. He made it!”
GETTING THE ANIMATION RIGHT
Once Upon a Studio is very impressive visually, not just for putting these animated characters into a live-action setting, but also making them all appear nearly identical to how they were originally depicted, no matter how varied, whether it be hand drawn or computer animation, and reflecting the sometimes subtle differences in the eras a character came from.
Correy said this was important to him and Abraham from the start, explaining, “We knew from the get go that we’re only going to get three seconds with some of these characters, and they need to look and sound and feel and the color palette… Everything has to be spot on so that it brings you back to that moment [you met them]. And really, that was just the team here, just deep diving into everything from the color palette to the cleanup line – if, say, Sleeping Beauty has this beautiful ink line – and trying to do that in those shots. Or trying to bring that rough Xerox, scritchy scratchy line of the Dalmatians and Baloo and Robin Hood and Little John on to those characters.”
Disney has an incredible Animation Research Library where original art from their films is stored, and Abraham added, of making sure the characters all looked right, “I’d say just a tremendous amount of love went into that and research with the ARL. Luckily, we have everything at our fingertips to look back on the movies and the artwork.”
As for having these vastly differently animated characters then appear alongside one another, Correy said, “In terms of having those characters come together in a live action plate, there’s technical challenges, but I’d say the biggest thing was just communication between all the artists. We’re lucky that everyone here is under the same roof in Burbank. And so the CG animators could walk down the hall and talk to the hand drawn animators and say, ‘Hey, we have this scene where the characters are interacting. How do we do this?’ So it’s really just about communication.”
Abraham and Correy know the connection fans have with these characters, and Abraham remarked, “We really wanted to reconnect people with their friends again. And we tried so hard to make sure that the characters looked and sounded and acted exactly like you remember them so it would be that reunion.”
GENUINE LEGENDS
Some truly legendary people – not to mention official Disney Legends – contributed to Once Upon a Studio, including Richard Sherman, who co-wrote some of Disney’s most famous songs with his late brother, Robert. Decades ago, Sherman would visit Walt on the Disney lot to play songs he and his brother were developing for new projects on a piano Walt kept in his office. Now, at the age of 94, Sherman returned to the Disney lot and that very same office and very same piano to play for a new recording of “Feed the Birds” from Mary Poppins, heard during an emotional moment in the short that pays tribute to Walt himself.
Abraham and Correy were well aware how incredible and surreal it was to be present for this, with Abraham exclaiming, “We’ve said so many times, we didn’t know we could dream that big. It just felt like a dream. He sat down at that piano, he’s playing “Spoonful of Sugar”… He’s 94 years old. He’s playing on the same piano that he played “Feed the Birds” for Walt on Friday afternoons, when they would talk about the stuff of the day and whatever’s going on within the studio. And he’s the kindest… He was so into it. And it was amazing. And we got to show him a year later, on his 95th birthday, the final film and see his reaction and he gave us a standing ovation.”
Playing an onscreen role in the short is Burny Mattinson, the beloved Disney artist who began at the studio in 1953 and would then work on projects for the company all the way up until his death earlier this year, making him the only person who contributed to both 1955’s Lady and the Tramp and 2022’s Strange World, with so many other films in between.
Once Upon a Studio opens with a live-action segment of a young woman leaving the Disney Animation building at the end of a work day walking and chatting with Mattinson and Correy noted, “Dan had those in his first boards, of the humans walking outside. The storyboards had a drawing of Berny walking with a young intern. The whole idea behind that was that he was passing the torch to the next generation. So Berny was in that months before we even went to go talk to him to ask him if he’d be in it. And luckily, he said yes, and was was pretty honored to be a part of it.”
Added Abraham, “It was very cool. We had no idea that we were gonna lose him. We were so excited for him to be part of this and to really roll out the red carpet for the superstar that he is. He was just shy of 70 years with the company, longer than any person ever with Walt Disney.”
THE VOICES WE KNOW
As for the voice cast, in a few cases, archival recordings of actors who have passed away were used, such as Robin Williams as Genie and Cliff Edwards as Jiminy Cricket, while soundalikes were used in a couple of instances, such as Alan Tudyk (now quite the Disney Animation regular himself) voicing new dialogue for the Mad Hatter. However, over 40 actors returned to voice their original iconic roles, even if just for a single line, giving Once Upon a Studio an amazing cast list that includes the likes of Jodi Benson as Ariel, Jeremy Irons as Scar, Anika Noni Rose as Tiana, Dwayne Johnson as Maui, Idina Menzel as Elsa, Nathan Lane as Timon, Paige O’Hara as Belle and so many more.
Said Correy, of recording with all of these actors, “It was hard to not geek out because we had 40+ of the original voice cast come back. And I feel like we recorded those in like a month and a half or two months; a very short time period. So every couple of days, we were just meeting our heroes, and we’d get to show them the short and it just felt like a celebration every time we recorded. We’d show them the short and we’d share tears or laughs and then they would tell us a story of what it was like to work on that character, sometimes 30 years ago, and what being part of Disney Animation has meant to them. So it was a very special experience.”
Replied Abraham, “Yeah, time and time again, they had just the most wonderful stories. Richard White, the voice of Gaston, talked about how being Gaston was the greatest gift he ever had and how he would then go to children’s hospitals and do the voice for kids and all that stuff. We think of them sort of giving us this gift of this character but it went both ways, which I’d never thought about before and showing them the rough boards about what this is and what they’re going to be a part of and Jonathan Groff getting teary and stuff… It was just so cool. So unbelievably cool to work all together and to meet our heroes, quite frankly.”
Once Upon a Studio will debut on ABC during the The Wonderful World of Disney: Disney’s 100th Anniversary Celebration special on Sunday, October 15.
