Earlier this week, Disney
dropped the first teaser trailer for
Aladdin, their upcoming live-action adaptation of the 1992 animated classic. The teaser didn't actually reveal much, and only contained a few lines of actual dialogue spoken by the Cave of Wonders.
Fans of the original film might even recognize a few borrowed elements, including the Cave's calling for a "diamond in the rough." This is where original
Aladdin screenwriter Terry Rossio has a problem with the remake. Rossio, who wrote the 1992 version's script with Ted Elliot, took to social media to express his frustration with Disney's handling of the remake. Specifically, he has a problem with Disney lifting direct lines from the animated movie without compensating the people responsible for writing them originally.
"So strange that literally the only words spoken in the new Aladdin trailer happens to be a rhyme that my writing partner and I wrote, and Disney offers zero compensation to us (or to any screenwriters on any of these live-action re-makes) not even a t-shirt or a pass to the park," Rossio
wrote.
In
a follow-up tweet, Rossio explained how Disney is able to legally get away with this. As it turns out, when the original animated movies were made, no one had the foresight to predict live-action remakes, so there was nothing in the original contacts that required compensating the original writers. He
added that animated films are
"not covered by the WGA, and not subject to any rules, other than those specifically contracted."
The good news is that the WGA has reportedly attempted to address this issue over the past few years and, according to Rossio, there is now an option for animation writers to
"attempt to employ the WGA in their contracts."
Furthermore, Rossio stated that it's not necessarily about the compensation - as Disney paid him for his original work; it's more about the
"decorum" and
"lack of recognition."
You can check out all of Terry Rossio's tweets on the subject over
here.