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Walt Disney Animation is celebrating Disney at 100 this fall with the release of Wish. The next of the upcoming Disney movies draws inspiration from the House of Mouse’s century of beloved animated titles, including building upon the components for which the studio is most famous. Between fun music numbers, magical happenings, talking animals and memorable villains, Wish has all those Disney trademarks. And it almost had another, but the filmmakers decided to leave it as a rough sketch.
When I spoke to Wish producers Peter Del Vecho and Juan Pablo Reyes Lancaster Jones on behalf of CinemaBlend, I asked them why Chris Pine’s King Magnifico doesn’t get an animal sidekick like many classic Disney villains before him have had. I’m talking about the Iago to Jafar, the Flotsam and Jetsam to Ursula and so forth. Here’s what Del Vecho had to say in response:
There was a very early version where they had a cat, if I remember correctly, because Cats are evil in Disney movies.Yes. But, uh, that we lost that for various story point reasons, it became superfluous. So, currently no.
When I think about Disney cats as villains, of course my mind went straight to Cinderella’s Lucifer. And since Wish seeks to pay homage to a host of Disney movies across a century of filmmaking, I wasn’t far off base. Lancaster Jones added this:
I mean, definitely Lucifer is such a staple character, right? But yeah, it was a little bit of that, of like celebrating all of the animal sidekicks, but it just didn’t make sense because Magnifico has Amaya you know, who is a pivotal character in the movie, and a lot of the interactions happened with her.
As the Wish producers shared with us, an animal sidekick for King Magnifico was most definitely in the cards early in the production process, ultimately they decided to cut the sidekick in favor of bringing more depth to the King’s interactions with his wife and the queen, Amaya. When I subsequently asked Chris Pine about the story element that was cut from his character’s arc in Wish, he had this to say:
I don’t remember a cat sidekick at all. I do remember going back in and they really wanted to, it was really important for them to get that arc of Magnifico where in the beginning you think he’s benign and then he turns bad. They really wanted to see that turn to bad. So I do remember coming back in and doing a couple sessions of really hammering down his evilness.
While Magnifico’s cut animal sidekick never came across Chris Pine’s desk, the actor shared that he did recall coming back around the vocal booth throughout production to underline the character’s evilness even more. You can learn more about Pine’s villain via the early Wish footage we saw of his big bad song “The Thanks I Get.” Previously, the producers told me Pine was often “geeking out” about being part of the Disney movie during development.
King Magnifico is a sorcerer who serves as the ruler of a fictional kingdom called Rosas, which is located on the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages. In Rosas, Magnifico takes its residents’ wishes for safe keeping when they turn 18 and then grants a handful of them a year to the excitement of his people. However, when a teenager named Asha challenges his rule, Magnifico goes to darker depths to maintain his power.
Wish premiered last week to glowing first reactions from audiences. The movie hits theaters on November 22.