The History of Aladdin Part 3: Dawn of Production!

As mentioned in the previous episode, while the executives at Disney loved reading Howard's treatment for Aladdin, it was ultimately shelved for a short period of time. The reason is unknown, whether it was due to a large amount of films in production, or due to budgeting concerns on the film. However in late 1989, Linda Woolverton was tasked with converting Howard's draft into a screenplay, and production on Aladdin began. Fortunately and unfortunately in Woolverton's initial draft of the screenplay, some significant changes were made from Howard's treatment.
To start on the list of Woolverton's changes, the sidekick characters of Babkak, Omar, and Kassim were consolidated into one aged sidekick character, (who was also a retired thief) named Abu. The film's tone was changed from being similar to a Hope/Crosby road film in which the music told the story to a film that was essentially an animated remake of The Thief of Baghdad, and unfortunately did not have any songs, having no room and no reason for Howard's. The Wazir was also named "Jaf'far" for the first time in this draft, and was similar to the villain of the same name from The Thief of Baghdad. Jasmine was also given a sidekick of her own, a handmaiden, and her personality began to change in personality from vain and spoiled to somewhat more benevolent. While Woolverton's initial draft was a solid start to what the film would ultimately become, there were many problems throughout.
The first and primary problem was the over-abundance of human characters and a lack of animal characters. The second problem was the idea to discard Howard's score and songs from the original draft. Luckily, Ron Clements and Jon Musker would rectify these problems in their version of the film as well as adding some ideas of their own.
Clements and Musker had decided to do Aladdin initially as a follow-up to The Little Mermaid, and as mentioned before, brought some changes of their own to the table, such as making the elderly Abu and the handmaiden into a monkey and tiger, respectively. They also decided to bring back what they could salvage of Howard's songs in his original treatment, as well as reviving Jafar's parrot with the new name of Iago (contrary to popular belief, the parrot was not named after the villain of Othello that was also named Iago, but he was named after the parrot in a TinTin comic). Also, Genie's character was changed from a slave portrayed by a black actor to a character that was a shapeshifter that could do impersonations of celebrities that were popular at the time.
The change in Genie's character proved to be a slight problem for Howard, as he feared the change would cause Friend Like Me to be cut from the film. Luckily, as John Musker stated in an interview with Howard Ashman's sister, "I explained to Howard that our approach to the Genie could accommodate his ability to shift into a number of personas, one of whom could be a jazzy showman". Musker stated that he believed only one man would be perfect for the role; Robin Williams. According to Howard's sister (Sarah Ashman-Gillespie) and Musker, Howard personally knew Robin, as Howard had a good friendship with his first wife while attending the same college in Vermont. While arranging to visit Howard in New York to discuss production of the film, Howard dropped a bombshell...

TO BE CONTINUED...