Roger Allers, a veteran Disney filmmaker who co-directed the unique “The Lion King,” died Saturday. He was 76.
The Academy Award-nominated director’s decades-spanning work at Disney additionally included turns as a author, storyboard artist and animator for beloved movies akin to “The Little Mermaid,” “Magnificence and the Beast” and “Aladdin.”
Allers’ dying was introduced by his colleague Dave Bossert, a former Disney animator.
“Roger was a very gifted artist and filmmaker, a real pillar of the Disney Animation renaissance,” Bossert wrote Sunday on Fb.
Bossert described his longtime collaborator as “one of many kindest folks you could possibly hope to know and work alongside.”
“Roger had a joyful, luminous spirit, and the world is dimmer with out him,” Bossert wrote. “Relaxation in peace, my good friend. Till we meet once more on the opposite aspect.”
Disney Chief Government Bob Iger additionally paid tribute to the director, whom he referred to as “a artistic visionary whose many contributions to Disney will dwell on for generations to come back.”
“[Allers] understood the facility of nice storytelling — how unforgettable characters, emotion, and music can come collectively to create one thing timeless,” Iger mentioned Sunday in a press release on Instagram.
“His work helped outline an period of animation that continues to encourage audiences all over the world, and we’re deeply grateful for every part he gave to Disney,” the chief wrote.
Allers’ tenure at Disney started greater than 40 years in the past, when he labored on the storyboard workforce for the sci-fi thriller “Tron” (1982). He went on to play “a pivotal position within the Disney Animation renaissance of the late ‘80s and all through the ‘90s,” Walt Disney Animation Studios wrote Tuesday in a social media put up.
The leisure multihyphenate’s crown achievement got here in 1994, when he and “The Lion King” co-director Rob Minkoff dropped at life the film that former Instances movie critic Justin Chang known as “one in all Disney’s largest gambles.”
“The Lion King” boasted an estimated $42-million home opening weekend, the studio’s largest ever on the time. It’s nonetheless the highest-grossing historically animated movie of all time.
Allers — born in 1949 in Rye, N.Y. — seemed again on the movie’s success in 2011, telling The Instances that it “gave a possibility for lots of younger animators who hadn’t had an opportunity to guide a personality. In order that they had been fired as much as do job — it was fairly an inclusive and inventive circle.”
“Everybody was listened to,” Allers mentioned. “When it got here to fruition and everybody may see the message it was placing out and the center the film had that went on to be embraced by the viewers … it was very gratifying. I’m nonetheless type of overwhelmed by the response.”
Allers is survived by his kids, Leah and Aidan, and his accomplice, Genaro, in line with the Hollywood Reporter.
