As the producer of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Lion King and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Don Hahn knows that inspiration can strike in the unlikeliest places. Case in point: the idea for Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Walt Disney Pictures' newest animated feature, was conceived over a plate of tasty cheese nachos Hahn shared with co-directors Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale.
Fast-forward to late March 2001, a day that finds Hahn completing the film's final sound mix at Skywalker Ranch with Oscar-winning sound designer Gary Rydstrom (Hercules, A Bug's Life), and you have a good idea of what Hahn has been up to for the past four-and-a-half years.
Coming up with the idea for Atlantis, which Hahn calls "a big, fun, action-adventure movie," was actually a "no-brainer," he says. One of the trio's first thoughts was to do something along the lines of Journey to the Center of the Eaith. But while they all agreed that Jules Verne had spun a great tale, they wanted to create "something more original" by concentrating on the "Atlantis section" of the book, which concerns the explorers who find the lost continent. "Using the Disneyland metaphor, we said, 'Instead of going into the castle to make another Fantasyland movie, let's turn left and go into Adventureland,' " Hahn relates.
Action-adventure stories have always been a part of the lexicon of Disney films, Hahn points out, but the studio hasn't made one in a while, at least not in animated form. "We've done a lot of musicals and fairy tales — it's part of our heritage. But action-adventure is also a big part of our heritage, with films like Swiss Family Robinson and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. And, of course, our generation was really inspired by films like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Dune and StarGate. We just couldn't get it out of our minds, that feeling you got when you went to the theater to see Raiders for the first time. It stayed with you. That's the kind of movie we wanted to make."
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