No medieval Arabic source has been traced for the tale of Aladdin, which was incorporated into The Book of One Thousand and One Nights by its French translator, Antoine Galland, who heard it from a Syrian Christian storyteller from Aleppo.
The movie Aladdin is the thirty-first animated feature in the Disney animated features canon. It was released on November 25, 1992. Aladdin relates a version of the story of Aladdin and the magic lamp from The Book of One Thousand and One Nights. As is usual with Disney film adaptations, many aspects of the traditional story were changed for the movie.
The story takes place in the mystical city of Agrabah. When Princess Jasmine gets tired of being forced to remain in the palace that overlooks the city, she sneaks out to the marketplace, where she accidentally meets Aladdin, a street-rat, and his monkey friend Abu. Under the orders of the evil Jafar (the sultan's advisor), Aladdin is thrown in jail and becomes caught up in his plot to rule the land with the aid of a mysterious lamp.
Released at the peak stretch of the Disney renaissance era beginning with The Little Mermaid, Aladdin was the most successful film of 1992, with over $217 million in domestic revenues and over $504 million worldwide.
Aladdin was directed by Ron Clements and John Musker. The musical scores were created by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman (with additional lyrics provided by Stephen Schwartz and Tim Rice after Ashman's death). Menken received the 1992 Academy Award for Original Music Score of Aladdin. The main soundtrack song "A Whole New World" (sung during the closing credits by Peabo Bryson and Regina Belle) won a Grammy Award as well as the Academy Award for Best Song in 1992.
Voice actors included Scott Weinger as Aladdin, Robin Williams as the Genie, Linda Larkin as Jasmine, Gilbert Gottfried as Iago, Jonathan Freeman as Jafar and Frank Welker as Abu.
Aladdin was followed by two direct-to-video sequels: The Return of Jafar (1994) and Aladdin and the King of Thieves (1996), and an animated television series, Aladdin, set between the two sequels.
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