The Annecy Festival has officially begun, and Walt Disney Animation Studios brought a spoonful of sugar to start the festival off on a high note. During the festival’s opening ceremony, Trent Correy and Dan Abraham took the stage to introduce a brand-new short film, which will be attached to Wish when it enchants audiences on the big screen on November 22nd. Trent and Dan previously directed the Frozen short Once Upon a Snowman, and now they’re back with a similarly titled short, Once Upon a Studio. In their introduction, Trent and Dan shared that they took the initiative to brainstorm a way to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Disney Animation, brainstorming for eight months to craft the narrative seen in this meta short.
It’s off from work they go as the talented artists close up Walt Disney Animation Studios for the day. Disney Legend Burny Mattinson escorts a new recruit out, who is in awe of the right history of the studio. But when everyone is gone for the day, it turns out the artwork on the walls comes to life! Characters from every Disney animated feature come out to play, plus a few familiar faces from classic shorts (and maybe a theme park project or two). And, as any platinum celebration should, the story is brought full circle with a nod to Walt Disney.
It’s Night at the Museum meets Walt Disney Animation Studios. Mixing live-action with animation, Disney history buffs will recall Walt Disney’s quote about using everything the studio ever learned to create Mary Poppins. That theme keeps moving forward here as CG characters from the studio’s more recent hits brush up against toons made of ink & paint. And as often as possible, audio is reused from the animated films.
After the screening, which was met with rapturous applause, Trent and Dan returned to the stage to share a few behind-the-scenes tidbits. Burny Mattinson sadly passed away earlier this year, but the directors knew they wanted to tie this story to the legendary animator, whose career with Disney lasted nearly 70 years (Dan did the math, that’s longer than Walt Disney was alive). Trent added that forty voice actors were brought back into the studio to record dialogue for the project. But since so much of this short is hand drawn, one of their proudest moments was bringing back artists from an era we’re all nostalgic for. Chief among them is Eric Goldberg, who is attending Annecy Festival and took the lead on the hand-drawn elements. As the hand behind Genie in Aladdin, he’s very used to pulling tricks out of hats and boy, does he deliver!
As a diehard Disney Animation fan, Once Upon a Studio is wondrous. I’m excited to see it again on the big screen with Wish, but I’m even more excited for the eventual home video release. I wanted to press pause so many times to try and take it all in. At one point, I was making a list of all the characters I saw. But they just keep coming, and if I could write fast enough to keep up, my notebook likely would’ve ignited. But for now, I’m going to keep who’s in it a secret because I want you to experience what I experienced. I want you to go to the theater on November 22nd to see Wish, and be treated to Once Upon a Studio. If you’ve been underwhelmed by some of the Disney100 offerings thus far, this short rights the course, sending audiences past the second star to the right and straight on ‘til morning.
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Editor’s Note: a previous version of this article stated that the short utilized reused animation. It does not — the animation is 100% new.