Trouble With The Strip Mining

Oh dearie me ...

The studio and Aladdin director Guy Ritchie launched a global casting call in March to find the stars for the musical based on the hit 1992 animated film [Aladdin], about a street kid who teams with a genie to woo the princess Jasmine. ... But finding a male lead in his 20s who can act and sing has proven difficult — especially since the studio wants someone of Middle-Eastern or Indian descent (the animated film is set in the fictional Middle Eastern city of Agrabah). The original casting call specified that production was slated to begin by July, but the search has dragged on, with Disney and Ritchie having to go back to the drawing board multiple times. Sources say there have been several rounds of tests in London, with the actors coming in for up to two weeks at a time. “The test process was a mess,” says one agent with a client who tested. ...

The long-term sorrow, of course, is that ... at some point ... the studio will run out of old animated features to replicate in live-action, and then they'll have to resort to doing live-action versions of the CG features. Difficult to tell how that ploy will turn out.

I'm certain we can all agree that going with the tried-and-true is safe, sane and profitable. Which is why Diz Co. does it. Being fresh and original is so over-rated.