Disney’s Atlantis The Lost Empire

I’ve always enjoyed Disney’s Atlantis: The Lost Empire. With a great voice cast including Michael J Fox, Cree Summer, James Garner, Claudia Christian, John Mahoney, Jim Varney and others, it’s an engaging adventure story which was meant to draw in teens, a slightly older demographic than Disney’s traditional core animation audience.

The film did not do well at the box office, but it’s stayed alive on home video and has a core of fans that are as passionate about it as you might expect.

The Press Kit

PRODUCTION NOTES

Diving into uncharted realms of art and the imagination, Walt Disney Pictures and the talented filmmaking trio responsible for such recent animated favorites as Beauty and the Beast and The Hunchback of Notre Dame – producer Don Hahn and directors Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise – take moviegoers on a wondrous animated expedition to Atlantis: The Lost Empire. With its bold, graphic visual interpretation and eye-popping wide-screen animation, Atlantis: The Lost Empire is an exciting and imaginative cinematic journey to a fascinating and mysterious place. Expressive character animation, the studio’s most ambitious blend of digital and hand-drawn special effects and an action-oriented story add to the film’s extraordinary appeal. With a vocal cast headed by Michael J Fox, James Garner and Leonard Nimoy, innovative sound effects by seven-time Academy Award®-winning designer/mixer Gary Rydstrom, and a stunning underscore by acclaimed composer James Newton Howard, the film’s sound is as impressive as its look and delivers the right tone of comedy, action and drama.

In Atlantis: The Lost Empire, an inexperienced young adventurer becomes the key to unraveling an ancient mystery when he joins a group of intrepid explorers to find the legendary lost empire. At the center of this action-filled animated adventure is naïve-but-determined museum cartographer/linguistics expert Milo Thatch, who dreams of completing the quest begun by his late grandfather, a famous explorer. When a long-lost journal surfaces, providing new clues to the location, and an eccentric billionaire agrees to fund an expedition, the action shifts into high gear. Milo ultimately leads Commander Rourke and his team to the elusive undersea kingdom, but what they find there defies their expectations and triggers an explosive series of events that only Milo can resolve.

A talented group of actors and actresses were enlisted to give voice to the characters. Michael J Fox’s bold vocalization of Milo Thatch gave the character the energy, strength and appeal of an action hero. Veteran actor James Garner lent his genial, avuncular style to the character of Commander Rourke. Leonard Nimoy gave a royal turn as the reclusive King of Atlantis, who alone holds the secrets of his civilization. Providing the vocals for his daring daughter, Princess Kida, is veteran voiceover actress Cree Summer. John Mahoney is heard as the eccentric billionaire, Preston B. Whitmore, who finances the expedition to Atlantis. David Ogden Stiers, a Disney animation favorite, returns to the studio to voice Milo’s bombastic boss, Fenton Q Harcourt.

The voices for Rourke’s rough-and-ready team of explorers are provided by an equally diverse and versatile group of vocalists. Claudia Christian (Commander Susan Ivanova on Babylon 5) gives a cold and calculating performance as the beautiful Helga Sinclair. Voice-over virtuoso Corey Burton dishes the dirt with his earthy and humorous portrayal of geologist Gætan Molière (aka Mole). Don Novello (Father Guido Sarducci) gives an explosively hilarious performance as the laid back demolitions expert Vinny Santorini. Actor Phil Morris (Seinfeld) is just what the doctor ordered as the voice of the fast-talking Dr. Sweet. The late Jim Varney (who created the lovable nuisance Ernest and gave voice to Slinky Dog in the Disney/Pixar Toy Story films) creates one final character with his vocalizations for the crew’s crusty cook, Cookie. Jacqueline Obradors (Six Days, Seven Nights) is Audrey Ramirez, the grease monkey of the outfit and loyal friend to Milo.

Working closely with screenwriter Tab Murphy (Tarzan®) and a talented story team (supervised by John Sanford), Hahn, Trousdale and Wise began to incorporate new plot points and character development through a storyboard-driven process. Kevin Harkey, Chris Ure, Todd Kurosawa, Kelly Wightman and Dean DeBlois comprised the story team and contributed to this process. David Reynolds is credited with writing additional screenplay material.

From the very inception of the project, the directors had a strong concept of what the film should look like. Mutual fans of a popular comic book artist named Mike Mignola (Hellboy, Bram Stoker’s Dracula – the official comic adaptation of Francis Ford Coppola’s film, etc.), Trousdale and Wise chose a bold departure for the design and style for Atlantis: The Lost Empire. Enlisting the talents of art director Dave Goetz (their collaborator on The Hunchback of Notre Dame), the directors brought in Mignola to help design the production and freely adapt his flat, graphic and layered style for their purposes. The resulting blend of classic Disney and Mike Mignola – a style which was internally referred to as Dis-nola – gave the film a daring and expressive look unlike any of the studio’s other features. Mignola himself had a hand in designing Atlantis and giving it a distressed tropical paradise look with a Southeast Asian flavor. His design style is felt throughout the film in the look of the characters and the background settings. In keeping with the film’s 1914 setting, the artistic team incorporated elements of the machine age/industrial period with the imaginative graphic style of Mignola.

Helping to achieve this distinctive look for the film was an artistic team that included background supervisor Lisa Keene, layout supervisor Ed Ghertner and artistic coordinator Chris Jenkins. The film’s other artistic leaders were computer graphics imagery supervisor Kiran Joshi, visual effects supervisor Marlon West, cleanup supervisor Marshall Toomey, scene planning supervisor Tom Baker and color models supervisor Karen Comella. Ellen Keneshea was the film’s editor. Another key player on the production team was associate producer Kendra Haaland.

In order to do justice to the film’s vast landscape and lavish settings, the filmmakers chose to present Atlantis: The Lost Empire in CinemaScope®. This wide-screen format has only been used in animation on rare occasions (Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty, and the Disney/Pixar film, A Bug’s Life) and the impact is extraordinary. A wide-screen presentation requires a special approach to composition plus additional animation to utilize the larger screen area. Hahn notes, “The CinemaScope screen is 30 per cent bigger than a regular movie screen and it delivers a visceral moviegoing experience that transports audiences. Action/adventure films are ideally suited to the wide screen and Atlantis: The Lost Empire uses this expanded canvas to maximum advantage.”

Adding a whole other level of credibility to the Atlantean civilization, the filmmakers turned to real-life linguistics expert Marc Okrand to create an original, readable, speakable language. Okrand, who had previously created words for the Vulcan language (for Star Trek II) and went on to invent the Klingon language (used in Star Trek III and on Star Trek: The Next Generation), made up hundreds of Atlantean words for this film that are spoken by Michael J Fox, Leonard Nimoy, Cree Summer and others. The Atlantean language, which has a corresponding 29 letter alphabet, is rooted in Indo-European but essentially has a set of rules all its own.

In keeping with its reputation as an action-adventure film, Atlantis: The Lost Empire represents the biggest animated effects film the Studio has ever done and the best integration of traditional 2D and digital 3D effects in Disney’s history. Artistic coordinator Chris Jenkins estimates that there is some form of effects in 6,000 of the 7,600 feet of film. Digital effects (362 in all) are seen in 30 per cent of the film and Deep Canvas (a digital approach to painting backgrounds which was created for Tarzan® to add a sense of depth to the scene) was used in at least half-a-dozen scenes. Among the dynamic visual effects seen in Atlantis: The Lost Empire are explosions, lava-spouting volcanoes, fire-setting fireflies, glowing crystals, laser beams, atmospheric effects, tidal waves, bubbles, and crowd scenes, among others.

Also adding to its impact as an action-adventure film is a dynamic score by James Newton Howard. Director Kirk Wise notes, “He gives the film such scale and sweep and really huge emotion. He treats the film as he would a live-action film and his contribution is truly amazing.”

In addition to writing the film score, Howard also lent his musical talents to composing the end credit song in collaboration with acclaimed songwriter Diane Warren (who also wrote the lyrics). Entitled “Where the Dream Takes You,” it is sung by hit recording artist Mya.

Another major highlight of the film is the vast amount of imaginative land and sea vehicles that was created for it. Ranging in shape and size from the massive Leviathan (the mechanical crustacean-like guardian of Atlantis) to the sophisticated Ulysses (the explorers’ submarine, estimated to be 1,000 feet in length) to the crystal-powered flying stone fish, used as a means of transportation by the Atlanteans, the vehicles play a major role in the film. The explorers bring a caravan of 1914 vintage steam-powered trucks and machines that include Mole’s digger, Cookie’s chuckwagon, and other transport vehicles. The film’s finale even features a gyroscopic emergency evacuation air ship (or gyro-evac), an inflatable escape device complete with propellers.

Animation on Atlantis: The Lost Empire began in late 1997 with the production team eventually reaching a maximum of about 350 artists, animators and technicians. Although most of the production took place in California, Disney’s Paris Animation Studio also made a major contribution to the effort with the animation of Helga Sinclair and some of the film’s backgrounds, cleanup animation and effects.

The filmmakers assembled a top team of animators to bring their large ensemble cast of characters to life. Many of the supervising animators (including John Pomeroy, Ron Husband, Dave Pruiksma, Tony DeRosa, Mike Cedeno and Shawn Keller) have been associated with Disney Feature Animation for two decades. Several have supervised characters before (Mike Surrey, Russ Edmunds and Randy Haycock), while others (including Anne Marie Bardwell and Yoshi Tamura) stepped up to the plate with first-time supervising roles on this film.

“We had a great group of people working on this film,” notes Hahn. “There was a lot of experience in the ranks, from Gary and Kirk on down, and this was a team which had largely worked together before on Beauty and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. They communicated well and they had a lot of fun in the process. We had a lot of depth on our bench in terms of creative talent and we discovered some really great new talent as well.”

Thomas Schumacher, president of Walt Disney Feature Animation, observes, “Atlantis: The Lost Empire presented our creative team with a great opportunity to explore the action-adventure genre in animation and Don, Kirk and Gary have taken full advantage of the medium to tell a great story. They are masters at what they do and this film reflects a new level of maturity and storytelling excellence for them as filmmakers. The film itself has a look and style all its own with a great ensemble of characters that we think audiences are going to love. Everyone seems to have a different theory about Atlantis and it was fun for us to learn about some of those exciting notions and come up with our own mythological take on this fascinating subject.”

THE STORY

Several thousand years ago, Atlantis was a thriving civilization at the height of its glory. When the King and his subjects chose to use their superior powers to dominate the world, a fierce battle took place that resulted in the city’s destruction. Swallowed by a giant tidal wave, the enclosed city disappeared without a trace that it ever existed. Until now…

The year is 1914 and Milo James Thatch, a cartographer and linguistics expert tries to convince his colleagues at the museum that he knows the whereabouts of Atlantis. His late grandfather, Thaddeus Thatch, had told him about the mysterious Shepherd’s Journal, an ancient book that could provide the key to finding the lost empire. Thatch, as his grandfather before him, is dismissed as a lunatic.

Just when all seems lost, Thatch gets a chance to put his theory to the test. Summoned to the home of eccentric billionaire Preston B Whitmore, he is shown the Shepherd’s Journal for the first time. It had been unearthed by his grandfather. Whitmore tells Thatch that he is financing an expedition to find Atlantis and that he is to lend his linguistics expertise to guide a team of explorers. Commander Rourke will lead the team, which includes experts in geology, demolitions, mechanics, medicine, etc.

On board their state-of-the art submarine, the Ulysses, the expedition gets underway but is rapidly headed for troubled waters. A giant mechanical creature, the crustacean-like monster called the Leviathan, guards the entryway to Atlantis and attacks the submarine. The crew scrambles to escape pods just as its main vessel is torn apart. Following the journal’s directions to a subterranean approach to the lost city, the resourceful group faces numerous hazards and hardships as they make their way to Atlantis.

In Atlantis, the group meets Princess Kida, and discovers that the city is populated. Crystal energy has kept the inhabitants alive in the center of the Earth for centuries and provided a source of light, power and healing. The curious Princess leads the explorers to her father, the King, who orders them to leave at once. Rourke bargains for more time to rest and re-supply.

Kida takes Milo on a tour of the city and together they discover that the crystals are alive and hidden deep within the city. When he shares this news with Rourke, he is shocked to learn that the cunning commander has known about the crystals all along and has plans to pillage them and sell them on the surface to the highest bidder.

When Milo and most of the crew opposes Rourke’s plan, the commander defiantly kidnaps Kida and the crystals and heads to the surface with his troops. In a heroic climax, Milo uses a shard of crystal to reanimate a long-dormant Atlantean armada of flying stone fish vehicles and engages in a desperate battle to rescue Kida and save the city from certain doom.

ORIGINS OF THE PROJECT

The idea for a film about Atlantis dates back to 1992, when the studio began internally developing a project on that legendary subject. In the fall of 1996, after completing work on The Hunchback of Notre Dame, filmmakers Don Hahn, Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale turned their attention to their next project. The trio began discussing ideas for an animated film that would capture the flavor of the traditional Disney live-action adventure genre (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Swiss Family Robinson, In Search of the Castaways, etc.) as well as such contemporary films as the Indiana Jones series. Over lunch one day at a local Mexican restaurant, the trio hatched an idea to take a journey to Atlantis.

Hahn observes, “We decided we wanted to bring back the great genre of action-adventure movies that Walt was famous for in the 1950s and that filmmakers like George Lucas and Steven Spielberg rejuvenated two decades ago with Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and others. We wanted to make a big wide-screen epic movie in animation. There’s a whole land at Disneyland called Adventureland; so we decided, ‘let’s go there.’ Instead of going down Main Street and through the castle to Fantasyland, where we’ve been so many times before (and thankfully so), we thought we’d make a turn left at the hub and go into Adventureland and have some fun there.”

“We talked a lot about cool expedition stories and especially stories that took place underground involving lost worlds, lost civilizations and monsters,” recalls Wise. “Eventually, we settled on the notion of a team of explorers finding the lost civilization of Atlantis. As we learned more about the subject, we found everything from the most carefully thought out and scientifically approached research to the most outlandish wacky far-out conjecture you could possibly think of. We found that if you mixed a little bit of science with a lot of crazy fantasy, we could end up with a real entertaining story that was actually somewhat rooted in history.”

To help them prepare for the production, Hahn, Trousdale, Wise, art director Dave Goetz and the key artistic supervisors took several research trips. They went to the various museums to study World War I era clothing and machinery. The group toured submarines in Baltimore Harbor. At the US Army Ordnance Museum in Maryland, they looked at old tanks and the biggest armored vehicle collection in the world. In New Mexico, they stopped at Carlsbad Caverns and went 800 feet underground to observe the

THREE OF A KIND: HAHN, WISE AND TROUSDALE TOGETHER AGAIN

With two successful collaborations to their credit, producer Don Hahn and directors Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise have an enviable track record. Perhaps even more important than that, they have fun. Working together for over a decade, the trio have created a pair of the most memorable animated films of all-time and had a good time in the process.

According to Hahn, “Kirk and Gary have become friends and are really like brothers. The thing I have always loved about working with them as directors is that they’re great storytellers. And that’s all there is. Some directors are great illustrators and others are great with the camera, but unless you can engage the audience and entrap them into some emotional connection with your characters and your setting and the story that you’ve decided to tell, it’s for naught. And I think what Kirk and Gary are really good at, first and foremost, is revealing story to us. It’s almost like peeling back the layers of an onion. For example, in Atlantis: The Lost Empire, the characters reveal to us who they are slowly throughout the movie. They seem like a hardened bunch of mercenary explorers, and then we find that each has a past. And then we find that their past is meaningful to them. And then we find out what their plans are for the future.”

Trousdale returns the compliment: “Nobody knows the business like Don. And he literally knows it from both the producing side and the creative side. He knows the art form. He is very much a creative partner and is always the third guy in the room making the movie with us. He’s also great fun to have around. He has a very devious mind.”

Wise adds, “Don is also a really good coach. He’s always encouraging us to make it a little bit better, a little funnier, a little more dramatic. He’s got excellent instincts. He’s definitely a full-service producer.”

Summing up his relationship with the directing duo, Hahn observes, “I’m like the Jiminy Cricket to their Pinocchio. My job as producer is to pull together a great team, and to be their conscience. I like to sit in a recording session and say, ‘Well, don’t you think we should try this?’ or ‘How about that?’ They’ll disagree with me half the time easily but the idea that they tolerate that conscience speaking to them is to their credit.”

Adding insight to his successful partnership with Trousdale, Wise observes, “I think the reason Gary and I work so well together is that we try to keep it fun and lighthearted, even at times of dire story crises. It also helps that we’re both very much on the same wavelength with things like humor and staging.”

Trousdale adds, “Usually, we both don’t crash at the same time. If I’m really depressed about something, he’ll say something like, ‘It’s not so bad! We can fix it.’”

AN ANIMATED ENSEMBLE: BRINGING THE CHARACTERS TO LIFE

Atlantis: The Lost Empire features one of the largest ensemble casts ever created for a Disney animated film. Rising to the occasion, a team of top animators and vocal talents were enlisted to bring these characters to life and give performances that would be both believable and entertaining.

To supervise the pivotal role of Milo Thatch, the directors turned to John Pomeroy, a veteran animator who had most-recently supervised Captain John Smith in Pocahontas and the title character of the Firebird for the Stravinsky segment of Fantasia 2000. Pomeroy, whose non-working hours are devoted to creating impressive paintings of military encounters and historic moments, jumped at the chance to animate a spirited adventurer.

“From the moment Don Hahn told me the story, I knew I wanted to be on the picture,” recalls Pomeroy. “I related to the character instantly because I’m a bit of a historical bookworm myself. My wife even calls me Milo because to her I’m one with the character. Like Milo, I tend to get oblivious to my surroundings when I’m focused on what I’m working on. He has a naïveté that is very appealing and is someone we can all relate to. He has wonderful ideas and theories but is under the thumb of the museum hierarchy. He’s the underdog and my heart goes out to him. As a character, he has a great arc and we get to see him transform physically, spiritually and mentally. I love watching Milo winning over his companions. It’s very Capra-esque.”

“Michael J Fox was amazing to work with,” adds Pomeroy. “He was a virtuoso at the microphone and he understood the situation and would improve it. He also improvised emotional nuances that weren’t in the script and made the character very sympathetic. Michael is also incredibly funny and brought his own sense of humor to Milo. It’s been a joy working with him and on this character. In almost 30 years of animating, I’ve never had an experience like this.”

Pomeroy explains, “The Milo character has a kind of angularity about him that’s very refreshing. After the first recording session with Michael J Fox, everything fused together and the sound filled in the visuals for me. I knew how the mouth and eyes should look. Mignola’s style was challenging and fun. I didn’t have to worry if the anatomy was correct as long as I had a good graphic representation of the structure. It’s a lot like Sleeping Beauty in the sense that the animation is a flat graphic style.”

For Michael J Fox, creating the role of Milo Thatch was “an honor.” He notes, “What was really cool was to watch the project develop. Normally when you do a movie, you know what you’re going to look like. Here, you’re informed by the pictures as to what the character is all about. You’re collaborating in a really special way and it was great fun.

“What I relate to in Milo is his sense of adventure and integrity,” adds Fox. “The best thing that I can say about somebody is that they’re the same when they’re alone as when they’re with other people. And that’s Milo. He is so zoned in on this quest and for all the right reasons. He’s flawed and he knows it yet, at the same time, he doesn’t limit what he expects from himself and he really thinks he can rise to the occasion. He’s the type of person who believes that there’s more to the world than meets the eye and that there’s magic out there. It’s that kind of optimism that is great about Milo and I feel that way too. It’s great to play a character like that.

“I’ve always loved fantasy and myth where anything is possible,” says Fox. “I also love the idea that there’s stuff out there that we don’t know about. Atlantis: The Lost Empire represents every kind of boyhood fantasy about going on an adventure and discovering something and knowing more than the adults around you. The Disney animators create magic and using the latest computer effects there are things they can do that can’t be done any other way.”

Overseeing the character of Commander Rourke was Mike Surrey, the veteran animator responsible for the merry meerkat Timon in The Lion King and the wisecracking gorilla Terk in Tarzan®. Acclaimed actor James Garner shades this commanding character with just the right blend of warmth, charm and humor.

Surrey explains, “Rourke is an interesting character because there is a lot of subtlety and sarcasm to him. James Garner is a great voice because he’s not the obvious villain-sounding character. He has this nice warm voice that sounds like your uncle or grandfather. It’s good for the character because it doesn’t betray anything. Having a character that is very angular and not made up of natural curves (the Mignola style) was hard at first but you find ways to make it more of an animated character and to function in more than one dimension.

“One of the things I enjoyed most about animating Rourke was the scenes where he would get angry,” adds Surrey. “To give him that emotion and tap into it for a bit was great. It was fun to see how angry and upset you could make him and to explore that side of him.”

Director Kirk Wise notes, “Casting James Garner to voice Rourke was an irresistible temptation because he has this great history of being in action pictures, westerns and war movies. He’s great at playing a good guy who’s kind of a scoundrel and this part fit him like a glove.”

Supervising animator Mike Cedeno was responsible for bringing life to the King of Atlantis, a wise and ancient (25,000-year-old) ruler who is the sole keeper of his civilization’s greatest secret. Protective of his daughter, Princess Kida, and the Atlantean citizens, he is alarmed by the arrival of outsiders and resists all efforts to befriend them. Leonard Nimoy provides the vulnerable monarch’s voice.

“The King is a very old character who is also blind,” explains Cedeno. “This assignment required a real sensitivity of drawing and I’ve really grown as an animator since I started on this film. His movements are so subtle that you have to think of special ways to convey his emotion. In researching the character, I spent time at the Blind Institute in Los Angeles to see how people use their hands and how they listen.

“Leonard Nimoy gave a great performance and provided lots to work with,” adds Cedeno. “He knows exactly how to bring an earthy quality to his voice and showed a lot of sensitivity for the character.”

Randy Haycock, whose credits include overseeing the animation of the villainous Clayton in Tarzan®, was in charge of animating Princess Kida, the film’s female lead. Beautiful, bold and brave, this curious character takes a strong interest in Milo and his friends and sees them as a key to understanding Atlantis’s past.

Popular voiceover actress Cree Summer (Rugrats, Pinky and the Brain, Teacher’s Pet) lends her playful, husky voice to the role of the feisty Princess.

“Emotionally, Princess Kida is really at the center of the film,” says Haycock. “She leads Milo to fall in love with Atlantis and she provides him with the motivation to take the bold steps that he does in the film’s climax. When I started working on the film, I was worried that the characters would be all about action and adventure and that there wouldn’t be any opportunity to get inside them. The directors explained that the characters would have to drive the action and you have to care about them or you won’t care about what’s happening. They understood that from the beginning.

“When I’m developing a character, I try to keep a journal with lots of notes about them,” he adds. “I can’t design a character unless I know the personality. I always try to ask myself three questions: Who is the character? Where does the character come from? Why is the character where he or she is now? This helps me to understand what the character’s ultimate goal is and what his or her arc is going to be. I learned this technique from some of the great Disney animators who came before me. In a sense, we’re standing on the shoulders of those giants.”

Cree Summer explains, “Speaking Atlantean was a real challenge. It was a very difficult language but the writers and director were very cool about it. They told me to make it my own because no one had ever heard it before. Who would know if I said anything wrong? I would get these tapes before coming in to record and I would drive down the freeway speaking to myself. It’s hard to get a handle on but it sounds really cool when you get it right.”

Supervising animator Shawn Keller had the double duty of animating eccentric billionaire Preston B Whitmore and the chuckwagon chef Cookie. A 22-year Disney veteran, Keller had a ball animating these two animated oddballs.

“Preston Whitmore is a mysterious Howard Hughes kind of character,” observes Keller. “He has a lot of fun idiosyncrasies to work with and, physically, his movements are very broad and exaggerated. Cookie was also a very physical character with a great voice. It was a privilege working with a comic genius like the late Jim Varney and I would listen to his voice over and over again to get all the comic timing and performance I needed for the character.”

Director Gary Trousdale adds, “John Mahoney brought a great energy to the character of Whitmore. He does these wild kinds of vocal peaks and valleys where he’ll be speaking calmly about something one moment and then he turns on a dime and will be laughing like a maniac and doing tai chi the next. He really captured the character nicely and made it a great marriage of animation and voice.”

Another supervising animator who had two great characters to work with on Atlantis: The Lost Empire was Dave Pruiksma. The talented artist, whose repertoire includes Mrs. Potts in Beauty and the Beast and the Sultan in Aladdin, was responsible for the animated antics of Mrs. Packard (the world-weary communications officer) and Fenton Q Harcourt (Milo’s bombastic boss at the museum).

“David Ogden Stiers’ voice really made the Harcourt character work,” says Pruiksma. “The sound quality is very rich and beefy with a full-jowled quality. His tone actually dictated the design of the mouth shapes I would use. David is an amazingly versatile actor and his voice is different every time we’ve used him in one of our films. Packard was a hoot to animate. Even with all hell breaking loose all around her, with emergency lights flashing and people running for their lives, she remains calm while she finishes up a phone call with her friend Marge. Florence Stanley provides this great monotone delivery which indicates the same level of disinterest in everything she does.”

Tony DeRosa, a 19-year Disney artist who most recently oversaw the sprite character in Fantasia 2000’s “Firebird Suite” sequence, supervised the character of Gætan Molière (aka Mole) and Corey Burton lent his voice to this dirt-loving deviant.

“Molière is out there in a world of his own,” says DeRosa. “He has this love for dirt and the only thing he loves more than dirt is digging. He wears this wonderful helmet which has binocular-like goggles and all sorts of gadgets that pop out like a lamp, tweezers, and even a brush and dustpan. The biggest challenge in animating him was making this round, fat character fit into the angular Mignola style. I basically kept the shape real simple, especially the face. He found many ways to get the personality across with his voice.”

The character of Helga Sinclair, Rourke’s smooth and shadowy second-in-command, was animated at Disney’s Paris Animation Studio under the supervision of Yoshi Tamura. Claudia Christian brought spirit, sensuality and sarcasm to the vocal persona.

“Graphically, the Mignola style worked very well for Helga,” says Tamura. “She plays very well in silhouette and her key poses became very important. In my imagination, I pictured her as someone like Veronica Lake or the other great actresses from those great old black-and-white film noirs.”

Christian adds, “Helga is a strong and spirited woman who isn’t afraid to give orders and is quite tough and slightly loud at times. I certainly wouldn’t call her demure or subtle. She is rather sensual when you first meet her. It was a very fun role to play and the whole film is extraordinarily exciting.”

Supervising animator Russ Edmunds, who most recently supervised Tarzan’s loving ape mother, Kala, had the choice assignment of animating the explosives-loving Vinchenzo Santorini (aka Vinny). The inimitable Don Novello provided the vocal performance.

“Mike Mignola’s drawings were the starting point for Vinny’s design,” explains Edmunds. “He is very stylized and has triangles for eyes, bowlegs and a giant comb of a moustache. Don Novello’s fantastic delivery gave me all kinds of ideas and I could visualize how I was going to animate him as I listened to the recording. The character uses his hands and eyebrows a lot and has a very dry sense of humor.”

Ron Husband, whose 26-year career at Disney includes a recent stint guiding the stately elk in Fantasia 2000’s “Firebird Suite”, was responsible for animating the amicable Dr. Sweet.

“It was a privilege and a pleasure to work on the first real African American character in a Disney animated feature,” says Husband. “As an African-American artist, I feel very honored to have been a part of opening the door. I wanted Sweet to come off as a very likeable and believable character. I know the vocal performance was great; hopefully the animation does it justice.”

Phil Morris, who voiced the character, notes, “Sweet is a very extreme character. When he’s happy, he’s really happy. And when he’s solemn, he’s very solemn. There’s no middle ground with him. I like that he’s a big bear of a man with a very gentle soul. You just want him to wrap you up when you’re not feeling well or if you’re feeling down. He’s the kind of guy that has the right thing to say and the right way about him.”

Anne Marie Bardwell has been animating for 27 years and supervised the animation of the expedition’s chief mechanic, Audrey Ramirez. Actress Jacqueline Obradors added spunk and attitude to this spitfire’s performance.

“As a character, Audrey runs the entire range of emotion,” says Bardwell. “She’ll be yelling at somebody one minute and giving him a peck on the cheek the next. One of the challenges in animating her was her hair. We wanted it to have a lot of volume and to keep it moving. This meant doing a lighter line on the interior lines as opposed to just showing it as a silhouette. To accomplish that, we did more animation and had a lot more attention to detail.

“This character was so well defined and complete, that there were times where I felt like I was just channeling,” she adds. “She’s not carrying me; she’s coming through me.”

ADVENTUROUS ART DIRECTION: DAVE GOETZ AND MIKE MIGNOLA EXPLORE A NEW LOOK FOR AN ANCIENT PLACE

Visualizing a richly-imaginative place such as Atlantis gave the filmmakers and artistic supervisors one of their most challenging and rewarding assignments. Under the direction of art director Dave Goetz (who had previously worked with Hahn, Trousdale and Wise on The Hunchback of Notre Dame) and with a production design team that included comic book/graphic artist Mike Mignola, a fresh and original look for the lost empire began to take shape.

Wise explains, “We basically started with what we knew we didn’t want. We didn’t want aquamen or fish people with gills swimming around and living in a big dome underwater. We knew Atlantis was meant to be the mother civilization and so we started looking at architecture from many ancient civilizations to conceptualize what it might look like. We took lots of different cultures – a little Chinese influence, some South American, a bit of Middle Eastern, etc. – and created a visual synthesis. We wanted audiences to accept that Atlantis was the place which influenced all other cultures.”

“Our effort in creating a look for Atlantis was to consciously steer away from the common conception of a city with Greek columns under the sea somewhere,” adds Goetz. “Kirk and Gary were really clear about where they wanted to go with this. They were attracted to Mike Mignola’s bold and graphic style. It involved lots of black shadows and silhouettes, shallow overlapping layers, as well as angular shapes for the characters. Artistically, we also liked the look of the World War I era posters and felt that their big black shadow patterns were compatible with Mignola’s designs. We came up with the term posterization to describe the dark silhouette and flat color area approach we wanted for the film.

The combination of Mignola’s style with what we do at Disney was sometimes referred to as Dis-nola.

“Another major design element for this film was the industrial technological look of 1914,” adds Goetz. “We wanted the vehicles and props to have that clunky, overbuilt feel of iron plates and rivets. Everything was meant to be a little bit awkward by today’s standards. They’re not aerodynamic or pretty to look at. We purposely stayed away from the Victorian look with its filigree, velvet and brass.

“The city of Atlantis itself ended up having a Southeast Asian or Indian influence to it. It is very moist and tropical and has a distressed paradise sense about it. There are a lot of stone ruins that are overgrown with plants and vines.”

For Mike Mignola, who has been working as a comic book artist/writer for over 16 years, the collaborative experience proved to be eye opening. He recalls, “I usually spend all my time squirreled away in a room not talking to anybody. So to suddenly be thrust into a world where people are in meetings was like going back to high school. It was exciting and kind of fun. Visiting the studio for the first time was a surreal experience. I was so flattered that these guys even knew who I was let alone would let me monkey with their film. I asked if I could work on the look of the city and the Atlanteans, because that was kind of untapped territory. They let me carve out a niche for myself.

“It seemed obvious to me what Atlantis was going to look like,” adds Mignola. “It was just in my head and I had a lot of fun with it. I came up with the idea of Atlantis as a mountain and we were just seeing the very top of it. It became a matter of doing what I love to do, which is taking bits and pieces of reference and cramming them all together into a nice silhouette.”

Mignola concludes, “It was a great experience and the whole thing has taken on a bit of a dream-like quality. To see finished Disney animation and to think that it came from my stuff is a bit overwhelming. I have no idea why it happened to me, but I’m thrilled that it did. I think comic fans are going to be wowed by the stunning graphics. I can’t think of another film out there that looks like this or that’s got the hardware and technology. The submarines are beyond belief and the interiors had me gasping.”

Background supervisor Lisa Keene and her team had to adjust to the Mignola style. She observes, “Over the years, we have gotten very used to putting a lot of detail and rendering into our backgrounds. With this film, the style dictated that we use restraint. Mignola’s graphic style meant we had to go back to the basics of our training and rediscover how important lighting patterns and shadows are to a scene and to describing form and environment. Even though an object is flat and graphic, it can still have a lot of depth if you give it the right values and atmospheric perspective. This film was a learning experience for the background department and our challenge was to make our environments believable and enjoyable in the simplest, most effective way.”

Another major player who helped the filmmakers to achieve the look they wanted was artistic coordinator Chris Jenkins. Serving as a liaison between the artistic side and the production side, he was responsible for allocating resources and helping the various departments achieve their goals and get the best-looking results on screen.

“This was a very complicated film to create because it was a big action-adventure story,” says Jenkins. “We had a large cast of characters, all with pretty extravagant costumes and weaponry, an enormous amount of traditional and digital effects, and the whole thing was being done in CinemaScope. Our priority was to make sure the artistic quality was as good if not better than it had been in the past. Using workbooks and keeping the lines of communication open between all the departments was key to the film’s success.”

For layout supervisor Ed Ghertner, the wide-screen format posed some interesting challenges. “This film really lent itself to CinemaScope because of its action-oriented story,” he observes. “This format gives us greater peripheral vision so we ended up filling in the whole line of sight. The impact is much more emotional. It gives us more room for the characters to move around in, which allows for longer scenes. On the other hand, the characters have to stay active in the scenes, otherwise it can seem uninteresting.”

Cleanup supervisor, Marshall Toomey also had his work cut out for him on this film with the Mignola style and wide-screen format. “This movie had tons of pencil mileage because of all the characters and crowd scenes and the stylistic choice to go with Mike Mignola-influenced comic book designs,” notes Toomey. “We had to make sure that these characters, with their square and flat features, fit into a three-dimensional world. The character animators gave us a lot of great acting to work with and it’s our job to keep the essence of the emotion as we cleanup their rough drawings. Our department has to communicate with their counterparts in character animation to make sure their line quality captures all the acting and emotion. It is a strong marriage between the two. The thing that I’m really proud about on this film was the consistency of the characters that we were able to maintain. It turned out to be one of my favorite projects.”

A VISUAL EFFECTS EXTRAVAGANZA: BLENDING 2D AND 3D IMAGERY

“Atlantis: The Lost Empire is probably the most ambitious effects film Disney Feature Animation has ever made,” says Hahn. “Gary and Kirk always had in mind to do a big science fiction adventure bash and part of that is taking the audience to a place they’ve never been before. This film gave us a chance to use all the toys we had in the back room and create something really special. We used to try and put all of our eggs in one basket, like with the ballroom sequence in Beauty and the Beast or the Hydra scene in Hercules. With Atlantis: The Lost Empire, we wanted to make it more of a hybrid movie where you wouldn’t say, ‘Oh that’s the big CG set piece.’”

Overseeing the 362 digital effects shots for Atlantis: The Lost Empire was computer graphics imagery supervisor Kiran Joshi. He and his team of 22 modelers, software experts and digital character and effects animators, were responsible for such exciting elements as the Leviathan, the Stone Giants, the land and sea vehicles, etc. This department also worked closely with the visual effects team, under supervisor Marlon West, to integrate their 3D effects with the traditional 2D elements.

“Atlantis: The Lost Empire was a real breakthrough for Disney Feature Animation in terms of how the digital elements integrated with the traditional hand-drawn elements,” says Joshi. “There are many shots in the film where digital characters and effects seamlessly blended and mixed with the more conventional animated effects. Instead of having some spectacular digital element in your face, we wanted to use it throughout the film to best serve the needs of the story. Involving the CGI group early on in the production allowed us to plan ahead and keep up with the challenges and complexities of the characters and effects. This film also makes use of the Deep Canvas technique of creating 3D-painted environments that was introduced in Tarzan®. This is used to give a sense of movement and a dynamic flow to a scene.”

Among the biggest digital elements in the film are the vehicles ranging from the giant Leviathan to Rourke’s caravan of seven trucks and steam-powered equipment. The Atlantean warriors riding the flying fish armada in the film’s climax, along with the Stone Giants who rise from below the surface to protect the city, were also done using computer animation techniques.

Mike Merell, who supervised the digital animation of the Leviathan and Stone Giant characters, explains, “There’s an enormous amount of detail that goes into creating something like the Leviathan. With its intricate design, movement and markings, it would have been virtually impossible to do it by hand. Using the computer, we’re able to design and build a model in 3D and then create a moveable skeleton for it. The character itself has more than 100 moving parts, including facial animation. He doesn’t have a lot of screen time, but it took almost four years from start to finish.”

West and his team of 30 animators used traditional drawing techniques and computers to create such effects as bubbles, tidal waves, sea storms, cascading lava, fire-setting fireflies, explosions, glowing crystals, laser-type blasts, dust, dirt and a variety of atmospheric effects.

“The visual effects department was responsible for everything that moves except the characters themselves,” explains West. “And that means everything from the smallest prop to the giant submarine, the Ulysses. One of our biggest challenges was to balance the art direction of Mike Mignola’s comic book style with the need to have the effects look real. The audience expects fire, for example, to look a certain way and so its behavior must be based on reality. At the same time, we tried to incorporate Mignola’ s graphic look by using big, bold, splashy shapes. The fire in the film doesn’t have a lot of interior detail or highlight edges. It is still very rich looking but just not as detailed and rendered as we might normally do.”

CREATING THE ATLANTEAN LANGUAGE

Not many films can claim to have had an entire language created for it, but in the case of Atlantis: The Lost Empire, that is exactly what happened. In order to add to the credibility of the civilization, the filmmakers turned to linguistics expert Marc Okrand to invent a readable, speakable language that is used by the Atlantean population. Okrand, who has dabbled in Vulcan and had previously invented Klingon for the Star Trek films and television shows, took the challenge. Veteran Disney designer John Emerson had a hand in working with Okrand and the filmmakers to come up with a written alphabet that included lots of interesting doodles and vowels with dots over them.

“Atlantean is an important element in the film and not just window dressing,” notes Okrand. “It is a language of real people as opposed to creatures from outer space. The filmmakers wanted the Atlantean language to play a major role in the film. It wasn’t just that these people were from somewhere else and spoke something else. The language itself is a character. So we talked about how to incorporate what the language ought to be and how it was going to be used. Some of our conversations were specific to the film and the plot and some were about how languages and writing systems work in general. With Klingon, the sound systems didn’t have to fit human languages, whereas with Atlantean it is the exact opposite.

“Phonetically, Altantean is an easy language,” continues Okrand. “But grammatically, it is very different from English. It does things that English doesn’t do. Partly, the word order is different; partly the way the suffixes work are different. The verbs are highly inflected. As a written language, there is also a major difference.

“Atlantean goes back and forth. You start in the upper left-hand corner and work your way across to the right. At the end of the line, you drop down, still on the right, and read the second line right to left. The characters themselves are very complex. There are 29 letters plus ten characters for digits 0 through 9. In Atlantean, there is no letter c because the same sound can be created using either an s or k substitute. Additionally, we have a single letter for the sh, th and ch sound.”

Bearing in mind that Atlantis was supposed to be the root of all modern civilizations and following the film’s premise that it is located near Iceland, Okrand used Indo-European as his starting point in creating the language.

“The people who currently live in this region of the world are descendants of a group of people that anthropologists and linguists call Indo-Europeans,” says Okrand. “Although Indo-Europeans no longer exist, I was able to study the reconstructed language that is what they probably spoke. Using that as a basis, I looked for sounds that are common in a lot of languages and ones that were not associated with a particular language. Grammatically, I wanted something different than English, so we did things like put the verb at the end of the sentence. I created hundreds of words specific to the dialogue in the film and even created an Atlantean dictionary. If a word didn’t have a basis in Indo-European, I would look at other ancient languages to get an idea. I didn’t take any words intact.”

Actor Leonard Nimoy has spoken Okrand’s invented languages before and once again proved adept at picking up a new tongue. Okrand observes, “Leonard is my favorite. I taught him how to speak Vulcan in Star Trek II and he did a brilliant job with the Atlantean as well. One of the biggest challenges in creating this language was to make it sound like a real language and not gibberish. All of the actors were terrific at making it sound believable.”

THE SOUNDS OF ATLANTIS: THE SOUND EFFECTS WIZARDRY OF GARY RYDSTROM

Adding to the adventure and excitement of the film is a rich tapestry of sounds and sound effects, which enhance the overall experience and ambience. Seven-time Oscar®-winning sound designer/mixer Gary Rydstrom, whose credits include four previous animated features – Disney’s Hercules and the Disney/Pixar productions Toy Story (1 and 2) and A Bug’s Life – was in charge of this important area of the production.

“Working on an animated film is much bigger than you ever imagine,” notes Rydstrom. “You have to create every little detail of sound otherwise it’s not believable. Sound helps set up the mood and give the film a sense of scale and the scale of Atlantis: The Lost Empire is enormous. It is also different from any animated film I’ve done before because it feels like a live-action adventure film done in animation.”

“One of the biggest challenges of the film was to balance the 1914 period setting with the other-worldly, more ethereal world of Atlantis,” he continues. “It makes a nice contrast. One good example is the giant Leviathan, a mechanical guardian to the entryway, which has elements of an organic, living creature combined with the mechanical sounds of a 1914 jalopy. It has a crunchy stone sound and yet it can zap you with crystal energy.”

For the Atlantean ambience, Rydstrom created sounds of a lush, tropical setting complete with perpetual waterfalls and the hiss of steam from a nearby volcano. To give some scenes an added exotic quality, he created the sounds of strange animals in the distance. “Sometimes we used real animal sounds like slowing down the actual noises of frogs and monkeys. Other things we created musically from whistles. Lava is basically rumbly mud so we did things like spray compressed air into mud pits to get the bubbling and gurgling sound we needed.”

Creating the sounds for the numerous vehicles in the film was another major component of Rydstrom’ s work. “Everything is supposed to be vintage 1914, so we spent a lot of time trying to create the sound of old machinery. The big submarine has a mechanical heartbeat, made by the constant movement of a piston. Looping metal hits from a steel mill into a heartbeat rhythm was one way we achieved that. We went to old car and machinery conventions and recorded the sounds of old Model A cars, two-cylinder engines and weird steam engines to get a variety of sounds for the caravan of vehicles.”

Rydstrom used several innovative methods to give Atlantis an ethereal quality. He requested that Marc Okrand write some chants in the Atlantean language to provide some raw material for the sounds heard in the crystal chamber. A choir of men and women recorded the chant and it is heard at key moments throughout the film. The sound and tonalities of the crystals themselves were created using by rubbing the edge of crystal glasses and with other glass harmonics.

“My favorite things in the movie are the flying stone fish,” says Rydstrom. “It’s sort of our version of a primitive spaceship. The challenge was coming up with a sound for it because it has no moving parts. I began thinking about the sound you hear when you’re near a two-lane highway in the middle of nowhere and a car passes by. You hear it for the longest time and it sounds very musical. As it goes off in the distance, there’s a kind of resonant whine. We were able to take that sound, pitch it and make it rise and fall to make it sound like the energy driving the stone fish. We added in a stuttering sound like rocks driving against one another. We did what we would do for a spaceship in a sci-fi movie only these are made out of stone and propelled by a crystal. There are moments in the film where a lot of these fly by and it reminds me of the fighters in Star Wars, but it’s a whole different concept and sound. It was great fun to do.”

THE MYSTERY OF ATLANTIS: THEORIES ABOUT THE LOST EMPIRE

The existence of a lost island nation called Atlantis has fired the imagination since its earliest mention in a dialogue by the Greek philosopher Plato, some 2,400 years ago. Since then, theories have abounded ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous. One popular theory states that Atlantis was part of the island of Thera (now Santorini) in the Aegean Sea north of Crete, and home to the Minoan civilization. A volcanic eruption is said to have sunk Thera nearly 3,500 years ago. US Congressman Ignatius Donnelly wrote a book about Atlantis in 1882 – Atlantis – The Antediluvian World – that helped to popularize the subject. In 1940, psychic Edgar Cayce speculated that the lost empire was located near the Bermuda island of Bimini. Others believe that Atlantis is in Antarctica, the South China Sea, the Sahara Desert or Northern Mexico. Over the years, Hollywood has added to the legendary lore with such fanciful entries as George Pal’s 1961 feature, Atlantis, The Lost Continent and Sirens of Atlantis with Maria Montez.

Plato’s writing about Atlantis is said to have derived from an Athenian statesman and poet named Solon, who heard the story from an old Egyptian priest around the year 570 BC. Plato was the first to use the term Atlantis and according to his account, the island nation existed over 11,000 years ago in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and was populated by a noble and powerful race. It was the domain of Poseidon, god of the sea, and his son Atlas was the first King. For generations, the Atlanteans lived simple, virtuous lives but eventually greed and power corrupted them. Zeus and the other gods ultimately determined a suitable punishment for their abuses and in one violent surge, the island, its people and its memory were swallowed by the sea.

THE FILMMAKERS

DON HAHN (Producer) has been helping to create animation magic at Disney for 25 years. He is one of the most-successful animation producers of all time and his films have grossed nearly $2 billion at the worldwide box office and been nominated for 17 Academy Awards®. The films that he has produced – Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Who Framed Roger Rabbit – have been at the very heart of Disney’s animation renaissance and have helped define the studio’s exciting new direction with regard to animated features. Most recently, Hahn served as executive producer of Disney’s 2000 animated comedy, The Emperor’s New Groove.

Hahn began his professional career at Disney in 1976. As the producer of the 1991 animated phenomenon, Beauty and the Beast, he was responsible for guiding a team of 600 artists and helping to create the first film of its genre to ever receive a Best Picture nomination from the Motion Picture Academy. His next producing credit was on the 1994 animated blockbuster, The Lion King, which broke box-office records all over the world to become the top-grossing film in Disney history and one of the industry’s all-time top five performers. In his role as associate producer of the wildly inventive 1988 Touchstone Pictures fantasy, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, he was creatively involved in the production of yet another landmark motion picture.

Born in Illinois and raised in Southern California from the age of 3, Hahn developed an interest in animation and especially music at an early age. During high school, he performed as a member of the Los Angeles Junior Philharmonic and he went on to study music and art at Cal State Northridge. He entertained the notion of becoming a professional orchestral percussionist for a time before joining The Walt Disney Studios in 1976 and beginning his career in animation on Pete’s Dragon. Hahn went on to work with legendary Disney animator/director Wolfgang “Woolie” Reitherman as assistant director on The Fox and the Hound (1981). He served in a similar capacity on the Oscar®-nominated 1983 animated featurette, Mickey’s Christmas Carol.

As a production manager, Hahn’s credits include the Disney animated features The Black Cauldron (1985) and The Great Mouse Detective (1986). He also produced Michael and Mickey, a short film combining animation and live-action, for the Sneak Preview Theater at The Disney-MGM Studios in Florida.

In 1987, Hahn moved to London to serve a two-year stint as associate producer, along with acclaimed animation director Richard Williams, on Who Framed Roger Rabbit. He re-teamed with the irrepressible toon rabbit again as producer of his first short film, Tummy Trouble.

In addition to his enormous accomplishments as a filmmaker, Hahn is the author of several books including Disney’s Animation Magic: A Behind the Scenes Look at How an Animated Film is Made, which provides the definitive illustrated account of how these films are created. His most recent book, Dancing Corndogs in the Night, a light-hearted look at the reawakening of the creative spirit, was published in 1999.

Hahn, his wife, Denise, and their daughter, Emilie, live in Glendale, California.

GARY TROUSDALE (Director) brings his unique humor, artistic talents and storytelling sensibilities to his third feature assignment as director. The multi-talented Disney veteran has been involved in making animated films at the studio for over 16 years, working in a variety of capacities from effects animator to in-betweener to story supervisor and director. He first came to Disney in May 1984 and went on to make his feature directorial debut (with partner Kirk Wise) on the Academy Award®-winning musical-fantasy Beauty and the Beast. He later re-teamed with Wise on the acclaimed 1996 Disney animated film, The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Born in La Crescenta, California, Trousdale recalls loving cartoons as a child and creating his own flip books by the time he was in fourth grade. During his junior high school years, he toyed with the notion of becoming an architect, but a fateful meeting with a representative from CalArts (the Disney-supported institution in Valencia, California that offers a curriculum in character animation) during his sophomore year of high school inspired him to pursue a career in animation. He put together a portfolio of his drawings and paintings and was accepted by the school.

After studying at CalArts for three years, Trousdale joined the ranks of working animators. In 1982, he was hired by Carter/Mendez Productions, where he served a one-year stint animating, designing and storyboarding various projects for television. His next assignment was for Grand American Fare, where he did illustrations and paste-ups for restaurant menus, special event flyers and t-shirts.

Trousdale got his start at Disney as an effects assistant on The Black Cauldron (1985) and went on to create additional effects for the studio’s live-action fantasy, My Science Project in his role as assistant and clean-up animator. During this time, his series of bad attitude gag cartoons earned him some attention and, ultimately, a place on the story development team for the feature animation division. In that capacity, he contributed to three successive films: Oliver & Company, The Little Mermaid and The Rescuers Down Under. His credits also include story and design work on Disney’s award-winning, innovative computer-animation short, Oilspot and Lipstick, as well as preliminary story development on The Prince and the Pauper, Aladdin and other projects (Goofy of the Apes, Mickey’s Halloween).

In 1989, Trousdale and his Beauty collaborator Kirk Wise were teamed for the first time as co-directors on Cranium Command, the four-minute animated pre-show for Wonders of Life at Epcot. They had previously worked together developing the scenario for a Roger Rabbit short.

Following his stint on Beauty, Trousdale worked on the story team for The Lion King and helped to board that film before focusing his efforts on Hunchback.

Trousdale and his wife, Jill, a layout and story sketch artist, live in the San Fernando Valley with their sons, Nathan and Calvin.

KIRK WISE (Director) is at the helm of his third Disney animated feature, having previously directed (with partner Gary Trousdale) two of the studio’s biggest hits – Beauty and the Beast (1991) and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996). His extensive background in story development and animation prepared him well for this latest challenge, while his previous acting experiences allowed him to work closely with the voice talents in bringing their characters to life.

Born in San Francisco, Wise grew up in and around the Bay area, principally in Palo Alto. He earned his first paycheck for drawing at the age of seven when his mother submitted his rendering of a garbage truck and garbage man to the San Francisco Chronicle’s Junior Art Champion contest. His submission not only impressed the judges at the paper, who declared his entry a winner, but also won praise from the Sanitation Department, who sent him a letter of commendation and a check for the free advertising. Wise recalls thinking, “Wow, there’s something to this,” and knew from then on the career path he wanted to take.

In fifth grade, Wise took a Community Center course in animation and made his own primitive super-8 films using cutouts and clay figures. This hobby of making films continued throughout junior high school and high school. When his dad told him about CalArts and their special programs in animation, he immediately checked it out and applied for admission. He was accepted and spent the next four years learning his craft. As a student, he earned a living drawing caricatures (the ones with the big heads and tiny bodies) at Universal Studios and Magic Mountain. In his senior year at the college, he was hired by Disney to do freelance animation for the Sport Goofy in Soccermania television special.

Following graduation, Wise contributed animation and storyboarding to The Brave Little Toaster and Family Dog, an animated segment for Steven Spielberg’s Amazing Stories anthology series. Back at Disney, he animated on The Great Mouse Detective and Oliver & Company before discovering that his real interests were in the area of story and character development. He went on to work as a storyman on Oilspot and Lipstick, Mickey at the Oscars, The Prince and the Pauper, The Rescuers Down Under and Cranium Command. For the latter, he co-directed the four-minute animated pre-show (with Gary Trousdale) and provided the voice of the Hypothalamus character.

After completing Beauty and the Beast, Wise served as executive producer for Disney’s live-action comedy-adventure, Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey, for which he supervised the writing and recording of the animal’s dialogue and was involved in casting the voice talents.

KENDRA HAALAND (Associate Producer) brings a diverse background in advertising, marketing and animation production management to her third feature film assignment for Disney. She had previously served in a similar capacity for the studio’s animated releases Hercules and Mulan.

Born in Newport Beach, California, and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Haaland attended the University of Minnesota and went on to receive a Masters degree in international management from Thunderbird University (the American Graduate School of International Management in Phoenix). In 1984, she moved to New York to launch her professional career with McCann-Erickson Advertising, where she started as an assistant account executive and eventually handled such major clients as Lufthansa Airlines and Mennen. Among the highlights of her four years with McCann, she spent a year in Sweden, where she participated in the agency’s first junior executive program. In 1989, Haaland returned home to Minneapolis to take a job with Saatchi & Saatchi as an account executive on the Northwest Airlines account.

While visiting her brother, an animator, in California in 1990, Haaland met director Bill Kroyer, who was involved at that time in making the animated feature, FernGully… The Last Rainforest. Shortly after that encounter, she was offered a job as the film’s operation manager and she accepted. Relocating to Los Angeles, she spent the next one-and-a-half years coordinating the complicated logistics of making the film in several different countries. Following her assignment with Kroyer Films, she went to work for Iwerks Entertainment as a marketing director and spent the next 18 months working on Virtual Adventures and Cinetropolis, a location-based entertainment complex which debuted in Connecticut.

In 1995, she joined the Disney Feature Animation team and was immediately assigned to the Hercules unit.

TAB MURPHY (Screenwriter) has been a key creative player on several of Disney’s most-popular animated films including the 1999 release Tarzan®, for which he wrote the screenplay. He also played a major role in bringing the studio’s version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame to the screen by providing an exciting and condensed story treatment of the epic Hugo classic and then contributing his screenwriting talents to the process.

A native of Washington State, Murphy was raised in and around the Olympia area where he spent a large part of his youth hiking and fishing in the Olympic and Cascade Mountain ranges. After attending Washington State University for a year and Film School at the University of Southern California for a few more, he left school to devote his creative energies towards writing for the movies. Supporting himself with a part-time job at the local 7-Eleven, he launched his career as a screenwriter.

Murphy’s first break came in 1983 when he was hired by Paramount Pictures to write screenplays for Eddie Murphy (no relation). He went on to receive a co-story credit on Gorillas in the Mist (1988), for which he received an Academy Award® nomination. In 1995, Murphy made his feature directing debut on the romantic adventure tale, Last of the Dogmen, which was based on his own screenplay and starred Barbara Hershey and Tom Berenger.

Murphy and his family live in the Los Angeles area.

JAMES NEWTON HOWARD (Composer) has scored more than 65 feature films and earned five Academy Award® nominations. Among his most celebrated contributions to film music are the Oscar®-nominated scores for The Fugitive, The Prince of Tides and My Best Friend’s Wedding. He has also written the Oscar®-nominated songs “Look What Love has Done” (from Junior) and “For the First Time” (from One Fine Day). In addition, his evocative music has enhanced the box-office smash The Sixth Sense, Snow Falling on Cedars, The Devil’s Advocate, Liar Liar, Space Jam, Primal Fear, Restoration, Falling Down, Wyatt Earp, Dave, Alive, Glengarry Glen Ross, The Man in the Moon, Dying Young, Grand Canyon, My Girl, Pretty Woman, Flatliners and Everybody’s All-American, among many others. Last summer, he composed the score to Disney’s animated hit, Dinosaur. His credits include scores for the upcoming films America’s Sweethearts, Collateral Damage, Hearts in Atlantis, and Touchstone Pictures’ Big Trouble.

Howard began his music studies at age four.

He continued training at Santa Barbara Music Academy of the West and at USC School of Music as a piano performance major. He completed his formal education with orchestration study under legendary arranger Marty Paich. He subsequently began his industry career performing as a keyboard artist for Melissa Manchester and Elton John. He toured with the latter superstar during the 1970s and early 1980s. In addition, he worked with such legendary artists as Barbra Streisand, Diana Ross, Rod Stewart and Bob Seger.

For television, Howard has composed and/or written memorable themes for the series ER, and for which he has garnered two Emmy Award nominations.

THE VOCAL TALENTS

MICHAEL J FOX (Milo Thatch) was born Michael Andrew Fox in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and adopted the J as homage to the legendary character actor Michael J Pollard.

The young Fox loved hockey, and dreamed of an NHL career, but other interests came calling, and he soon found success in acting. His first role came in the CBC sitcom Leo and Me, featuring future Tony Award-winner Brent Carver. Three years later, he came to Los Angeles, where he appeared in numerous bit parts and the critically-acclaimed Alex Haley/Norman Lear series Palmerstown USA before being cast as Alex P Keaton, the conservative son of hippie parents in the NBC series Family Ties. In seven seasons, Fox would earn three Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe, making him one of America’s most prominent young performers. In 1996, after several years of working solely in motion pictures, Fox returned to the small screen as New York City Deputy Mayor Mike Flaherty in ABC’s Spin City. In four years on that series, Fox would receive an Emmy, three Golden Globes, a People’s Choice Award and two SAG Awards.

His work for the big screen includes the enormously popular Back to the Future series, Teen Wolf, The Secret of My Success, Light of Day, Bright Lights, Big City, Casualties of War, Doc Hollywood, The Trap, Life with Mikey, For Love or Money, Greedy, Blue in the Face, The American President, The Frighteners and Mars Attacks! Most recently, Fox took a turn off-camera as the voice of Stuart Little, a role he will reprise later this year. Soon, he will appear in the live-action Interstate 60.

Fox has also appeared in Woody Allen’s television film Don’t Drink the Water.

In 1998, Fox announced that he had been diagnosed with young-onset Parkinson’s Disease. He founded the Michael J Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research to help increase awareness, provide a voice for PD advocacy, and raise much-needed research funding. Fox whole-heartedly believes that with a concentrated effort from the Parkinson’s community, our elected representatives in Washington, and (most importantly) the general public, researchers can pinpoint Parkinson’s cause and cure in the next 10 years. For more information about Parkinson’s and to help fight the disease, please visit michaeljfox.org.

CREE SUMMER (Princess Kida) was 13 when she began a career as a voiceover actress, taking roles in the television programs Inspector Gadget, Ewoks, Tiny Toon Adventures, Mortal Kombat: The Animated Series, Jungle Cubs and Rugrats. Her voice was also heard in two Care Bears movies and two Rugrats movies. On-camera, Summer played Freddie Brooks for five seasons on the television series A Different World.

More recently, Summer’s voice has been heard in Disney’s Teacher’s Pet, Clifford, the Big, Red Dog, As Told By Ginger, Sabrina: The Animated Series, Batman Beyond, Histeria!, and the Disney video premiere, An Extremely Goofy Movie. Her second CD as a recording artist came in 1999 with the release of Street Faerie, for which she wrote 13 songs.

LEONARD NIMOY (The King of Atlantis) was born in Boston and worked in local theater before moving west to join the Pasadena Playhouse troupe. He made his motion picture debut in 1951’s Queen For a Day and has appeared in more than 100 television programs and stage productions, including the Broadway productions of Equus and Full Circle. Other stage appearances include tours of Oliver!, Fiddler on the Roof and Sherlock Holmes.

He achieved great fame in the 1960s for his role as Mr. Spock in the Star Trek television series, for which he would receive three Emmy nominations. He reprised the role in six Star Trek motion pictures, and took the director’s chair for two films in the series: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Nimoy also co-authored the stories for Star Trek IV and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

Nimoy was also a regular for two years on Mission: Impossible and appeared in the mini-series Marco Polo. In 1982, he received his fourth Emmy nomination for his performance in the telefilm A Woman Called Golda opposite Ingrid Bergman and Judy Davis. In addition, he hosted the syndicated series In Search Of… and the children’s show Standby… Lights! Camera! Action!

Nimoy began his directing career with television series episodes of TJ Hooker, The Powers of Matthew Star and Rod Serling’s Night Gallery. In addition to several episodes of television and two Star Trek films, Nimoy has directed the feature films Funny About Love, The Good Mother, Three Men and a Baby, and Holy Matrimony. In 1996, he made his Broadway directing debut with The Apple Doesn’t Fall. He also wrote, directed and starred in the one-man show Vincent: The Story of a Hero, with which he toured 35 cities and videotaped for A&E and Paramount Home Video.

For Walt Disney World, Mr. Nimoy directed a film attraction called Body Wars, a visual journey through the human body. He is the author of six books of poetry and has recorded five musical and five narrative record albums. In 1996, he and fellow Trek alumnus John de Lancie founded Alien Voices, a multimedia company dedicated to creating audio versions of classic science fiction stories.

Nimoy and his wife, Susan, reside in Los Angeles.

Leonard Nimoy passed away in February 2015

JAMES GARNER (Commander Rourke) has continually transitioned easily between film and television. He first came to stardom on the small screen as the quick-witted reluctant hero Bret Maverick in the hit CBS series Maverick. Since then, Garner has appeared in over 40 films, including The Children’s Hour, The Great Escape, The Americanization of Emily, Grand Prix, Cash McCall, Move Over, Darling, Support Your Local Sheriff, The Skin Game, Victor/Victoria, and an Academy Award®-nominated turn in Murphy’s Romance.

In 1974, he returned to television to play private eye Jim Rockford in The Rockford Files. The series was immensely popular, and in 1977, Garner earned an Emmy Award for his performance. Beginning in 1994, Garner reprised the role in seven Rockford Files television movies for CBS. Other television work includes the television films Promise (for which Garner was nominated for an Emmy for his acting and awarded an Emmy for his role as executive producer of the Outstanding Television Drama of the year), Heartsounds, My Name is Bill W., Decoration Day (for which he won the Golden Globe), Barbarians at the Gate (winning him another Golden Globe), and Breathing Lessons, and an extended guest stint on Chicago Hope last year.

Born in Norman, Oklahoma, in 1928, Garner bounced around at several jobs starting at age 14, including a stint in the Merchant Marines. He was drafted into the Korean conflict where he was awarded a Purple Heart. After the war, he returned to the States and received his first acting role: a small part in The Caine Mutiny Court Martial on Broadway.

More recently, Garner has appeared in the films Maverick (though he ceded the title role to Mel Gibson), Twilight, and Space Cowboys, as well as the television films One Special Night, Legalese and The Last Debate.

James Garner passed away in July 2014

CLAUDIA CHRISTIAN (Helga Sinclair) rocketed to fame as Commander Susan Ivanova on the syndicated hit science-fiction television series, Babylon 5, a role she played for four years in the series and two television films.

Born in Glendale, California, but raised in Connecticut, her first role came in a guest appearance on the long-running television series Dallas. Other television roles include a recurring role on Freaks and Geeks, a lead role on the syndicated Highlander series, and guest-starring roles on Family Law and Total Security. In film, Christian has appeared in Clean & Sober, The Hidden, Strays, Hexed, The Chase, and Love and Sex.

COREY BURTON (Gætan “Mole” Molière) began his voice career at age 17 doing a sound-alike for Disney as Hans Conreid. He then went on to study radio acting with the legendary Daws Butler (Time for Beany, Merrie Melodies, Yogi Bear, Chilly Willy) for four-and-a-half years. Since then, Burton has voiced sound-alikes and original characters for over 50 Disney Storyteller records. He can also be heard at various Disney and Universal Theme Parks attractions, in promotional and souvenir videos, and TV and radio commercials. Additionally, Burton has lent his voice as an announcer for network TV promos on NBC, ABC, CBS and FOX, and has narrated documentaries shown on PBS, A&E, The Discovery Channel, The History Channel and TLC.

Burton’s animation credits include voices on Disney’s Lloyd in Space, Superman, Batman Beyond, Disney’s Hercules, Pinky and the Brain, Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries, Disney’s House of Mouse, Mike, Lu and Og, Disney’s Adventures of the Gummi Bears, Chip ‘N Dale Rescue Rangers, Goof Troop, Bonkers, The Transformers and Disney’s Timon & Pumbaa. His feature film work includes character voices and looping for Dudley Do-Right, Critters, Poltergeist, Tron, ET, Total Recall, Endless Love, Amazon Women on the Moon, Action Jackson, Spaceballs, The Flamingo Kid, as well as Aladdin, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, Mulan, and Toy Story 2 for Disney. He recently returned to Disney to work with company vice chairman Roy E Disney in re-creating the voice of Deems Taylor for the DVD release of Fantasia.

On the Internet, he is the narrator of Elmo Aardvark: Outer Space Detective for Renegade Cartoons. He has also been the announcer for Old Navy commercials on television and radio for several years.

Burton occasionally works as a consultant on dialects, sound processes and studio microphones.

PHIL MORRIS (Dr. Sweet) is best known to fans of NBC’s long-running series Seinfeld as the long-winded, loudmouth lawyer Jackie Chiles. After playing the character several times on the series (including the series finale), Morris received Jerry Seinfeld’s permission to reprise the character in a series of Honda commercials in 1999. In the late 1980s, Morris took a role on ABC’s return of Mission: Impossible, in which he played Grant Collier, the son of the character Barney Collier, the role played by Morris’ real-life father Greg Morris in the original series. Other credits include roles in the television series The Love Boat: The Next Wave and The Young and the Restless; in the television film Tracks of Glory: The Major Taylor Story for the Disney Channel; and the feature films Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and Clay Pigeons. He also played the role of Steven Dimes in the NBC mini-series Jackie Collins’ Lucky Chances and its sequel, Jackie Collins’ Lady Boss.

DON NOVELLO (Vinny Santorini) is best known as Father Guido Sarducci, the gossip columnist for the Vatican newspaper, a role he created and performed on Saturday Night Live. He has reprised the role several times on other shows, including Gilda Radner – Live From New York and two specials for the Showtime and Cinemax cable networks. As a writer for SNL, Novello wrote several of the show’s most memorable sketches, including the “Greek Restaurant (Cheeseburger Cheeseburger)” sketch.

Novello was a regular performer on The Smothers Brothers Show in the late 1970s and a writer/producer of SCTV Comedy Network in the early 1980s, and he recorded two comedy albums for Warner Bros. His film work includes roles in The Godfather Part III, Tucker: The Man and His Dream, and New York Stories for director Francis Ford Coppola, as well as Touch, Casper, and The Scalper. Novello has also written three books: The Lazlo Letters, Citizen Lazio, and The Blade: Shellville High School (All Sheep) Yearbook.

JACQUELINE OBRADORS (Audrey Ramirez) received a Blockbuster Entertainment Award nomination for her starring role opposite Harrison Ford in Ivan Reitman’s hit romantic comedy, Six Days, Seven Nights. She also recently co-starred with Rob Schneider in Deuce Bigalow, Male Gigolo.

Upcoming feature releases include Tortilla Soup – a remake of the Chinese-language film Eat Drink Man Woman – and the thriller Diablo, opposite Vin Diesel.

Recent television credits include her role as a young detective on the sitcom Battery Park with Elizabeth Perkins for creator/producer Gary David Goldberg and a four-episode arc on Jesse as Bruno Campos’ ex-fiancée.

A native Californian, Obradors is known to friends as Jackie O.

FLORENCE STANLEY (Mrs. Packard) has distinguished herself with roles on both stage and screen. On Broadway, she appeared in The Prisoner of Second Avenue, Fools, What’s Wrong with This Picture?, Fiddler on the Roof, The Secret Affairs of Mildred Wild, The Glass Menagerie and The Apple Doesn’t Fall, which began in Los Angeles before moving to Broadway.

Stanley is perhaps best known as Bernice Fish, wife to Abe Vigoda’s crotchety Detective Fish on Barney Miller and the series spinoff, Fish. She was also a series regular on My Two Dads, Dinosaurs, Nurses, Joe and Sons and The Simple Life. Her more recent guest-starring appearances include roles on Malcolm in the Middle, Mad About You and Cybill.

On the big screen, Stanley appeared in Bulworth, The Odd Couple II, Trapped in Paradise, Outrageous Fortune, The Prisoner of Second Avenue, The Fortune, Up the Down Staircase and The Day of the Dolphin.

Florence Stanley passed away in October 2003

The late JIM VARNEY (Cookie) began entertaining at a young age because his remarkable ability to memorize poems and entire passages from books delighted his family. It was not a surprise when just prior to graduating high school, Varney was offered an acting apprenticeship by the prestigious Barter Theater, a nationally acclaimed professional company whose former players included Helen Hayes, the Barrymores and Gregory Peck (though he did later earn his GED). At age 18 he left for New York City to seek fame and fortune, and spent time performing stand-up comedy at clubs and playing a variety of featured roles in dinner theater productions.

In the early 1970s, he auditioned for a local commercial and won the part of Sgt. Glory, a character created by the Nashville-based Carden & Cherry Advertising Agency. The series of commercials that followed proved to be extraordinarily popular and ran for almost five years in Tennessee. Varney continued to pitch spots and work the comedy club circuit. Then in 1980 he got another call from Carden & Cherry Advertising. This time they wanted him for a new character – Ernest P. (for Powertool) Worrell. The public’s response to this characterization was immediate and positive. Before long, Ernest became a pitchman for everything from dairy products, soft drinks and car dealerships.

His major motion picture breakthrough came in 1987 when he starred in Touchstone Pictures’ Ernest Goes to Camp. He went on to star in the successful sequels, Ernest Saves Christmas, Ernest Goes to Jail, Ernest Scared Stupid, and others. Other film roles include the voice of Slinky® Dog in Toy Story and Toy Story 2.

Varney also has an Emmy Award for his television series Hey Vern, It’s Ernest! In 1992, the Tennessee State Senate honored Varney for his outstanding contributions to the State, particularly to children’s charities. In 1993, he played Jed Clampett in Fox’s production of The Beverly Hillbillies.

Varney died in February 2000 of lung cancer on his farm in Tennessee. His last roles were for Atlantis: The Lost Empire and for Miramax Films’ Daddy and Them.

JOHN MAHONEY (Preston B Whitmore) plays the gruff, ex-cop father to Kelsey Grammer’s overbearing radio psychiatrist on the long-running NBC sitcom, Frasier.

Born in Manchester, England, Mahoney came to the United States in 1959. After a stint in the US Army and another teaching English, he made his stage debut in the world premiere of David Mamet’s The Water Engine. In Chicago, where he still makes his home, Mahoney joined Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company and has appeared in over 30 productions there, including Death of a Salesman, Of Mice and Men, A Prayer for My Daughter, The Hothouse, You Can’t Take It With You, Born Yesterday, Wrong Turn at Lungfish, Death and the Maiden, and The Man Who Came to Dinner, a role he reprised in London. He appeared in Orphans and The Subject Was Roses off-Broadway and, in 1986, in the Broadway production of House of Blue Leaves, for which he received a Tony Award.

Mahoney’ s extensive film work includes roles in Tin Men, Moonstruck, Suspect, Frantic, Eight Men Out, Say Anything, The Russia House, Barton Fink, In the Line of Fire, The Hudsucker Proxy, Reality Bites, The American President, Primal Fear, and She’s the One. Other credits include the television films The Killing Floor, Dinner at Eight, and The Water Engine. In his previous two dramatic series, Mahoney starred in H.E.L.P. and The Human Factor.

John Mahoney passed away in February 2018

DAVID OGDEN STIERS (Fenton Q Harcourt) returns to Walt Disney Feature Animation after delighting audiences with his comedic timing as Cogsworth the clock in Beauty and the Beast, portraying the greedy Governor Ratcliffe in Pocahontas, and voicing the archdeacon in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Next year, he’ll join the five-timers’ club when he takes a role in Walt Disney Pictures’ summer 2002 release, Lilo and Stitch.

Stiers is perhaps best known to the public for his six-year stint on the hit television show, M*A*S*H, in which he portrayed Major Charles Emerson Winchester III. That role earned him two Emmy Award nominations. He subsequently received a third nomination for his work in the NBC mini-series First Modern Olympics.

Born in Peoria, Illinois, the actor began his career in the Bay area with the California Shakespeare Festival and, later, the Actor’s Workshop in San Francisco. Following this, he went to New York for advanced acting studies with John Houseman at the Juilliard School and with the graduating class became a charter member of Houseman’s Acting Company. With the latter, he toured in such shows as The Beggar’s Opera, The Three Sisters, Measure for Measure and The Lower Depths. On Broadway, Stiers appeared in Ulysses in Night Town with Zero Mostel and starred in the hit musical The Magic Show.

In the area of motion pictures, Stiers is currently starring opposite Jim Carrey in The Magestic and recently wrapped Woody Allen’s The Case of the Jade Scorpion. His other credits include Oh God!, Magic, The Man with One Red Shoe, Better Off Dead, Another Woman, The Accidental Tourist, Doc Hollywood, Steal Big, Steal Little, Bad Company, Mighty Aphrodite, Jungle2Jungle, and Everyone Says I Love You. His television work includes such distinguished programs as North and South, The Innocents Abroad, The Day My Bubble Burst, Mrs. Delafield Wants to Marry, Anatomy of an Illness, The Final Days, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and voiceover roles for Disney’s Teacher’s Pet and Disney’s House of Mouse.

In addition to his acting talents, Stiers has conducted many symphony orchestras all over the country, including those in Portland, Maine, San Francisco, San Diego, Honolulu, Los Angeles and Chicago. He is very proud of his post as principal guest conductor of the Yaquina Chamber Orchestra.

David Ogden Stiers passed away in March 2018

Dolby Digital Surround EX in Select Theatres
Sony Dynamic Digital Sound in Select Theatres
Digital DTS Sound in Select Theatres

MPAA #38177
IATSE

Copyright ©MMI Disney Enterprises, Inc.
All Rights Reserved

This motion picture was created by Walt Disney Pictures and Television for Purposes of Copyright Law in the United Kingdom

Soundtrack Available on Cassette and Compact Disc from Walt Disney Records

Disney’s Atlantis: The Lost Empire Trial by Fire Multiplayer CD-ROM Game Available Now

Books Available at Stores Everywhere
Disney Publishing Worldwide

Distributed By
Buena Vista Pictures Distribution

Walt Disney Pictures

Wallpapers

This 16×9 4K wallpaper (4096×2304 px) will look great on UHD, Retina and HD displays

Disney Atlantis Wallpaper 1

7 MB

Download

These wallpapers are 2560×1440 px

Disney Atlantis Team Wallpaper

2 MB

Download

Disney Atlantis SS Ulysses Wallpaper

1 MB

Download

For personal use only

Atlantean Typeface

This is the original typeface that was available for download from Disney’s site when the film was released. It’s been converted from Postscript format to modern Truetype which is compatible with most OSes and the web. Open the ZIP file on download and you’ll find a folder with the TTF file inside.

The diagram below shows which character to type to get the corresponding Atlantean character. The language is written boustrophedon style, meaning the first line is written left-to-right, the second line is written right-to-left, and continue to alternate.

Code Wheel

Here’s a code wheel that will print off on a single sheet of 8-1/2″ x 11″ card stock. Assemble it and you can translate the Shepherd’s Journal or any other item in Atlantean.

Pins

Disney pins fetch premium values on the collectors’ market, and the Atlantis pins are no exception. I’ve re-created a few of the ones I like here in lieu of acquiring the real things.

Toys, Games and Electronics

Mattel, Hasbro and others had the licences to produce toys, including play sets, vehicles, action figures and games.