John Edward Musker (born November 8, 1953) is an American animator and filmmaker. 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), Moana (2016).
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Early life
Musker was born in Chicago, Illinois, the second oldest of eight children in an Irish Catholic family. His father, Robert J. Musker, who worked for over 40 years at Illinois Bell Telephone, died in 2008 at the age of 84, and his mother, Joan T. Musker (née Lally), died in 2011 at the age of 81.
He attended Loyola Academy in Illinois and then graduated from the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University, where he majored in English and drew cartoons for the Daily Northwestern. After that, he 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).
Career
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.
Following the green-lighting of Clements's pitch for an adaptation of the children's book series Basil of Baker Street by Eve Titus into an animated feature, Musker and fellow story artist Burny Mattinson were assigned as the original directors while Dave Michener was brought in as an additional director. Due to a shortened production schedule and multiple story rewrites, Roy E. Disney assigned Mattinson to serve as director/producer while Ron Clements was brought in as another director.
While working on The Great Mouse Detective, newly appointed Disney CEO and chairman Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg issued invitations to the animation staff for their first held "gong show" session. Demanding only five new ideas, Clements pitched an adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid and a high-concept idea of Treasure Island in Space, which were both rejected by Katzenberg and Eisner. The next morning, Katzenberg approached Clements and asked him to expand his initial treatment.
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 re-developed their idea for Treasure Planet, but the studio still expressed disinterest. Instead, the two directors were offered three projects in development: Swan Lake, King of the Jungle, and Aladdin. The directors eventually chose the latter, desiring a wacky, faster-paced, and more contemporary mood separate from the previous Disney animated films.
Personal life
Musker is married to Gale. They have twin sons, Jackson and Patrick, and a daughter, Julia. He also has sisters by the names of Patricia, Colleen, Kathleen, Maureen, and Terri, and two younger brothers, Robert and Martin.
Filmography
Collaborations
John Musker and Ron Clements have cast certain actors in more than one of their films.
