Aladdin Sequel in Development

There’s still a lot of gray area, but after the billion-dollar success of last summer’s reboot, Disney is developing a sequel to Aladdin, according to Variety. Director Guy Ritchie is scheduled to return to the helm. Aladdin starred Will Smith as Genie, Mena Massoud as Aladdin and Naomi Scott as Jasmine, who are expected to take another ride on the carpet.

Aladdin 2 will be an original story and not follow the sequels to 1992’s Aladdin, 1994’s The Return of Jafar or Aladdin and the King of Thieves (1996), which went straight-to-DVD. The Aladdin 2 screenplay will be written by John Gatins, who was nominated for an Academy Award for writing the Denzel Washington film Flight, and Andrea Berloff, who was nominated for an Oscar for her screenplay for Straight Outta Compton, and wrote and directed The Kitchen. The sequel will be a theatrical release.

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The live-action remake of 1992’s Aladdin was a huge hit, joining Captain Marvel, The Lion King, Avengers: Endgame, Frozen 2, Toy Story 4 and Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker in Disney’s billion dollar movie club. Four live-action remakes of Disney classics, The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast and Alice in Wonderland, have grossed over $1 billion at the box office.

Aladdin from 1992 was the fourth film produced during the Disney Renaissance. Robin Williams did the voice of Genie to Scott Weinger’s Aladdin. Produced and directed by Ron Clements and John Musker, it also starred Linda Larkin, Jonathan Freeman, Frank Welker, Gilbert Gottfried and Douglas Seale. It was the highest-grossing film of the year and the first animated feature to reach the half–billion dollar mark. It held the title of highest-grossing animated film of all time until The Lion King beat it.

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The films are based on “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,” from One Thousand and One Nights, a series of Middle Eastern folk tales collected during the Islamic Golden Age, the 8th to the 14th century. Fox Film Corporation used child actors for the first film version Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp (1917), directed by Chester M. Franklin and Sidney A. Franklin. The Thief of Bagdad, from 1940, starred child actor Sabu, and featured Casablanca‘s Conrad Veidt.The first animated film adaption, The Adventures of Prince Achmed, was made in 1926. Popeye the Sailor visited the story in the 1939 cartoon Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp. It was also made into the 1959 animated film 1001 Arabian Nights starring Mr. Magoo as Aladdin’s uncle.

There is also an Aladdin spinoff featuring Prince Anders in the development at Disney+. That will star Billy Magnussen who played the part in the film. The script for that is being written by Jordan Dunn and Michael Kvamme.

Aladdin 2 Release Date

There is no Aladdin 2 release date announced yet.

Culture Editor Tony Sokol cut his teeth on the wire services and also wrote and produced New York City’s Vampyr Theatre and the rock opera AssassiNation: We Killed JFK. Read more of his work here or find him on Twitter @tsokol.