But in DeVito’s case, the role was written for him. Roz Ryan came in and read for it, and would take the part on.ĭanny DeVito didn’t read for the role of Philoctetes either, incidentally, and thus other actors were auditioned, including Ernest Borgnine. It became clear that the role needed to be recast, and was. In terms of Hercules, she simply wasn’t working out though, something that was evident very quickly. In hindsight, the directors learned that she’d “reportedly declared bankruptcy that week”, amongst one or two issues. They did make an exception for Nell Carter, who was duly cast in the role of Thalia, but problems quickly followed. The directors admit their reluctance to cast people without hearing them speak the lines of the character concerned. A genuine casting problem came when some of the people Musker and Clements wanted involved in the film wouldn’t come in to read for it. That was minor, though, in the scheme of things. “He was insistent that rather than ‘you go, girl’ it should be said, ‘go ahead…young lady!” I don’t think Chuck was familiar with the colloquialism we were playing with,” Musker noted. The directors checked if he was okay with the lines, and he questioned him having to say ‘you go, girl’. The problem? He wasn’t happy with the grammar of what he had to say. He came in to record the lines of said narrator. When they want to take over the narration of the story, the narrator concedes and even exhorts Calliope in a manner a bit out of character for him: ‘You go, girl…’”Ī call went in to the late Charlton Heston, who agreed to lend his voice to the film. In particular, at the start of Hercules, Musker noted that “we wanted the film to open with very sober, stentorian narration as we panned through a Museum of Classical Antiquities, but then be interrupted by the informality of our muses as they come to life off Attic vases. The pair threw themselves into the development of the movie, and Musker gave an insight into what they were up against. Thus, Musker and Clements struck a deal with the-then boss of Disney animation, Jeffrey Katzenberg, who agreed they could do Treasure Planet if the pair tackled another movie for him first. There, Musker recalls how Treasure Planet was set to be the next film for the pair following Aladdin, yet Disney top brass weren’t convinced about that project. It’s a casting problem that Musker explored in a series of excellent posts at the Howard Ashman Part Of His World appreciation website. With Hercules, though, they had a casting problem, and I thought it worth looking at that in more detail, to give a snapshot of one of the less-talked-about challenges of an animated movie.
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