How ‘Snow White’ and ‘Sleeping Beauty’s’ Storybook Opening Inspired Disney’s ‘Wish’

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor “The Color Purple” director Blitz Bazawule hesitated to take on the latest incarnation of Alice Walker’s sacred text. However, when he revisited the book, the first line (“Dear God, I’m 14 years old”) struck him as a way to navigate a familiar story and “keep expanding Celie’s imagination.” In the new musical movie adaptation, as Celie (Fantasia Barrino) is bathing Shug (Taraji P. Henson), an old record plays on a gramophone in the background.

For Disney’s 100th anniversary, writer-EP Jennifer Lee was tasked with creating an original fairytale that celebrated the legacy of Disney animated films. After finding a common theme in wishing upon a star, Wish was born as a way to dissect the power and vulnerability of the concept.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor The biggest challenge for “Poor Things” costume designer Holly Waddington was trying to establish a costume arc for Emma Stone’s Bella Baxter. In the Searchlight film based on Alasdair Gray’s novel of the same name, Bella is a creation of Willem Dafoe’s mad scientist Godwin. He brings Bella back to life after she tries to kill herself, using the brain of an unborn fetus, and Bella ends up a young child trapped in a woman’s body.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor Five years ago, while chief creative officer of Walt Disney Animation Studios Jennifer Lee was finishing work on “Frozen II,” she mentioned to her co-director, Chris Buck, that the studio’s 100th anniversary was coming up — and asked whether he’d want to be involved in any projects pegged to the anniversary?They didn’t have any idea what that animated feature would be but they knew that “we wanted original characters, story and music,” says Buck. They began gathering stills from every animated feature the studio had done and pinned them to a bulletin board. They looked at the breadth of colors and styles. From “Pinocchio’s” Jiminy Cricket to “The Princess and the Frog’s” Tiana to Judy Hopps in “Zootopia,” one thing was apparent — that these and many other characters had all made wishes on stars. “It feels very obvious.

Variety FYC Fest on Dec. 6 in Los Angeles. Variety‘s senior awards editor Clayton Davis, Senior Artisans Editor Jazz Tangcay and Senior Entertainment & Media Writer Matt Donnelly moderated several panels throughout the event.

Variety’s senior artisans editor Jazz Tangcay during Variety’s A Night With Artisans. The creatives who helped build the Los Alamos set for “Oppenheimer” or acquired 1,000 blankets for “Killers of the Flower Moon” shared their creative processes and stories from set. In six separate conversations, Tangcay spoke with the teams behind “Oppenheimer,” “Saltburn,” “Killers of the Flower Moon,” “Maestro,” “American Fiction” and “The Color Purple.” See the full Variety A Night With Artisans recap below.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor Brainstorming about how “Trolls: Band Together” should look, the creatives decided they wanted to take the colorful creatures to a different world than the previous two installments of the animated franchise.In this tale, Queen Poppy (Anna Kendrick) learns that Branch (Justin Timberlake) was once part of her favorite boyband, BroZone. When his brother Floyd (Troye Sivan) is kidnapped by pop star villains voiced by Andrew Rannells and Amy Schumer, Branch and Poppy bring the band back together to rescue him, embarking on a grand adventure culminating in a huge concert that turns into a rollercoaster-esque car chase.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor “I’m Just Ken,” the showstopping number performed by Ryan Gosling in “Barbie,” took Mark Ronson and co-songwriting partner Andrew Wyatt just two days to write. “But we needed the entire year to make it what it was,” notes Ronson. It’s been a contender to nab an Oscar original song nomination ever since it was first teased in the film’s trailer earlier this year.

Harrison Ford surprised SAG-AFTRA members during a nomination committee Q&A this afternoon when he showed up to talk about his role on Apple TV+’s “Shrinking.” Ford was keen to lavish praise on the cast of the comedy-drama television series, describing working with his co-stars as a uniquely different experience that rejuvenated his perspective on acting. “There are people who improvise as though it was an exercise in egos. That never happens with this bunch.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor Disney Animation Studios’ chief creative officer Jennifer Lee had not yet written the script for “Wish” when Grammy nominated songwriter Julia Michaels wrote the demo for “This Wish” in 2020. But that demo, Lee says, “defined the whole movie; it became our North Star.” Celebrating 100 years of storytelling at Disney, “Wish” pays homage to the celestial entity so many have wished upon. Ariana DeBose voices Asha, its main protagonist and heroine, a 17-year-old who lives in the magical kingdom of Rosas, ruled by Disney’s newest villain, King Magnifico, voiced by Chris Pine.

William Earl This awards season’s premier contending filmmakers, talent and artisans will gather for exclusive panels at Variety FYC Fest on Dec. 6 in Los Angeles from 9 a.m.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor “She blended in — there was no ‘Kitty’s world,’” “Oppenheimer” production designer Ruth De Jong says of the woman portrayed by Emily Blunt in Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster. Kitty is a scientist with her own ambitions when she meets J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy), the man who led the atomic bomb project.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor Growing up, Kris Bowers felt like he was an outsider trying to fit in. These days, he is anything but that in Hollywood. The Oscar-nominated composer has scored a wide array of projects in the past five years, ranging from “Green Book” to “When They See Us,” and worked with Ava DuVernay and Shonda Rhimes repeatedly.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor With a few weeks to go until the original song for Oscars shortlist is released, Aotearoa, New Zealand-based Māori Artist Stan Walker (Tūhoe, Ngāi TeRangi, Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāti Pūkenga, Tūhourangi Ngāti Wāhiao, Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Whakaue and Ngai Tahu) has released the video for the haunting original song created for Ava DuVernay‘s searing drama “Origin,” “This summer, I was talking with my producing partner Paul Garnes about wanting something unexpected for an original song to end our film, ‘Origin.’ The next day, he showed me Stan’s ‘Ultralight Beam’ interpretation and I watched it four times, back to back. I jumped online and blessedly, we had a producer pal of mine, Chelsea Winstanley in common.

Disney’s latest feature animation brings in the big guns in Frozen director Chris Buck and Disney and animation veteran Fawn Veerasunthorn for their 100th-year original, a fantasy adventure with all the right moves which reaches for the stars but doesn’t quite hit the dizzying heights of its predecessors.For their 100th year, Disney had to do something a bit special, particularly following the last film Strange World which far from performed with critics and fans alike. With Wish, the 62nd film in their history, it paints by numbers to create a feature animation featuring all of the hallmarks of the previous 61, but something doesn’t quite knit together.The story is set in the fantastical kingdom of Rosas, a mysterious desert island somewhere in the Mediterranean, heralded by King Magnifico (the voice of Chris Pine) and his wife Queen Amaya (Angelique Cabral).

Jennifer Lee, the Chief Creative Officer of Disney Animation, is teasing Frozen 3 and seemingly hints at a potential fourth film.

SPOILER ALERT: This story discusses major plot points for “Wish,” currently playing in theaters. Disney’s animated feature “Wish” features over 100 nods. As the animation studio celebrates its centennial year, “Wish” pays homage to classic Disney films from “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” to “Peter Pan,” “Sleeping Beauty” and more. Speaking with Variety, director Chris Buck explained they are “Disney nods” rather than easter eggs.

The new Disney animated movie Wish is now in theaters and there are so many great actors in the cast, some who you probably didn’t even realize have lent their voices to the project.

UPDATE: The Thanksgiving stretch will see the most amount of moviegoing for this fall after being slowed down by the actors strike.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor SPOILER ALERT: This story discusses major plot points, including the ending for “Saltburn.” Singer-songwriter Sophie Ellis-Bextor was already a fan of Emerald Fennell when she was approached about the use of her 2001 hit “Murder on the Dancefloor” in “Saltburn.” “I loved ‘Promising Young Woman,’” Ellis-Bextor says. But what really sold it to her was the pitch: “A naked man dancing through the rooms of a stately home…I’ve got a quirky sense of humor, and my main thing was, ‘I’ve got to see that.’” Set in 2006, Oliver is a student at Oxford University who becomes dangerously obsessed with the suave and good-looking aristocratic classmate Felix, played by Jacob Elordi.