Introduction
John Musker is an American animator, film director, screenwriter, and film producer. He often collaborates with fellow director Ron Clements and is best known for writing and directing the Disney animated films The Great Mouse Detective (1986), The Little Mermaid (1989), Aladdin (1992), Hercules (1997), Treasure Planet (2002), The Princess and the Frog (2009), and Moana (2016).
John Musker is an American animator, film director, screenwriter, and film producer. He often collaborates with fellow director Ron Clements and is best known for writing and directing the Disney animated films The Great Mouse Detective (1986), The Little Mermaid (1989), Aladdin (1992), Hercules (1997), Treasure Planet (2002), The Princess and the Frog (2009), and Moana (2016).
Musker obtained his Master of Fine Arts at CALARTS, California Institute of the Arts in Santa Clarita. There he served a two-year apprenticeship with famed animator Frank Thomas, a supervising animator of Disney films such as Peter Pan (1953), Lady and the Tramp (1955), and The Aristocats (1970).
Musker met Ron Clements during the production of The Fox and the Hound in 1981, where he worked as a character animator under Clements and Cliff Nordberg. Musker teamed up with Clements as story artists on The Black Cauldron before they were removed from the project.
With The Little Mermaid in production in 1986, Musker joined Clements in expanding the original treatment into a twenty-page rough script, eliminating the role of the mermaid’s grandmother and expanding the roles of the Merman King and the sea witch, and were later joined by Off-Broadway musical composers Howard Ashman and Alan Menken who collaborated on the song and musical score. Released in November 1989, The Little Mermaid was praised as a milestone in rebirth of Disney animation by film critics and collected a domestic gross of $84 million, cumulatively receiving $184.2 million worldwide.
When work on The Little Mermaid was wrapped, Clements and Musker began work on Aladdin. Working from Ashman and Menken’s treatment and musical score, the two delivered a story reel to Katzenberg in April 1991, which was strongly disapproved. Jettisoning multiple characters and story ideas and adding Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio as co-screenwriters, the production team restructured the entire story in eight days. Released in November 1992, Aladdin received positive reviews from critics, and became the first animated film to gross over $200 million domestically.
Following work on Aladdin, John worked on numerous Disney animated films including Treasure Planet, Hercules, Princess and the Frog, and Moana, among other things…
In March 2018, having worked at Disney for 40 years, Musker announced his retirement from Walt Disney Animation Studios. In 2023 he released his own short film “I’m Hip” which he animated by hand.