ADVERTISEMENTThe urban legend goes that Walt Disney was cryogenically frozen to one day be brought back to life. While there’s never been any truth to that, the pioneering American animator has, in-sort, been revived – as a robot.
To celebrate Disneyland California’s 70th anniversary in July, the theme park recently unveiled an animatronic replica of their founder.
Disney’s granddaughter, Joanna Miller, has denounced the creation – calling it “dehumanizing”.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Miller expressed her hurt upon seeing the mechanical figure: “I think I started crying,” she said. “It didn’t look like him to me.”
When the project was first announced last year, Miller voiced her concerns in a letter to Disney’s CEO, Bob Iger, later meeting with him and some of the members involved in the attraction’s creation.
Miller told Iger she strongly felt that, for visitors, “the last two minutes with the robot will do much more harm than good to Grampa’s legacy,” adding that people would “remember the robot – and not the man.”
While Iger was reportedly “very kind”, her pleas for the robot to be scrapped were ultimately ignored.
Miller also spoke out in a Facebook post last November, calling the idea of a “Robotic Grampa” a disservice to the real Disney, who once loved to greet the park’s visitors in person. “You could never get the casualness of his talking, interacting with the camera, [or] his excitement to show and tell people about what is new at the park,” Miller wrote. “You cannot add life to one empty of a soul or essence of the man.”
Miller made it clear to The LA Times that she was speaking on behalf of her mother and grandfather, noting that it “pains” her to be speaking out against his company.
“When you get older, you just start to get pissed off. And you get tired of being quiet. So I spoke up on Facebook,” she said. “The fact that it got back to the company is pretty funny.”
The Audio-Animatronics figure is due to debut in a new show titled ‘Walt Disney – A Magical Life’, which will open on 17 July 2025. “Creating our first Walt figure is an idea that’s been whispered in the hallowed halls of Imagineering for years – decades, even,” Disney Experiences Chairman Josh D’Amaro said during a company showcase. “We just had to wait for innovation to catch up with our dreams. And we’re finally ready,” he added.
A Disney press release explains how Disney’s Imagineers – the creative minds behind Disney park attractions – had “worked closely with the Walt Disney Archives to ensure we had the details as accurate as possible.”
As technology and, in particular, artificial intelligence (AI) has advanced, companies are increasingly experimenting with ways to bring back the dead. Last year, a film producer sued Disney for digitally recreating the late actor Peter Cushing’s appearance in Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope for 2016’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.
Previously, Disney used CGI and unused footage to resurrect actress Carrie Fisher for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, while the voice of James Earl Jones, who played iconic baddie Darth Vader and died last year, was artificially repurposed for the Disney+ miniseries Obi-Wan Kenobi.
While sometimes agreed upon by the actors themselves or their estates, any artificial recreations remain highly controversial as people become increasingly wary of technology trying to imitate and dehumanise art.
Meanwhile, despite the company riding a box office high with Lilo & Stitch – currently the second-highest grossing movie of the year – Disney announced on Tuesday that it is cutting hundreds of jobs worldwide to reduce costs and adapt to evolving industry conditions.
“As our industry transforms at a rapid pace, we continue to evaluate ways to efficiently manage our businesses while fuelling the state-of-the-art creativity and innovation that consumers value and expect from Disney,” a spokesperson said. “As part of this ongoing work, we have identified opportunities to operate more efficiently and are eliminating a limited number of positions.”
