Roger Allers
Roger Allers was an American filmmaker, animator, storyboard artist and playwright. He was best known for co-directing Disney Animation's The Lion King, the highest-grossing traditionally animated film of all time, and for writing the Broadway adaptation of the same name. He also directed Sony Pictures Animation's first feature-length animated film, Open Season and the animated adaptation of The Prophet.
Allers was born in Rye, New York and was raised in Scottsdale, Arizona. He developed an interest in animation after he had watched Peter Pan. Allers graduated from Arizona State University with a fine arts degree. He lived in Greece for the next two years, and relocated to Boston where he attended animation courses at Harvard University. He next worked as an animator for Lisberger Studios on several projects, including Animalympics and Tron. Allers also worked for Nelvana Studios in Canada and Toho in Japan.
In 1985, Allers was hired by Disney as a storyboard artist for Oliver & Company. He later worked as a story artist for The Little Mermaid, The Rescuers Down Under, and Aladdin. He also served as story supervisor on Beauty and the Beast. Afterwards, Allers and Rob Minkoff directed The Lion King, which became a critical and commercial success. For his second directorial project, Allers intended to direct Kingdom of the Sun, in which he was teamed with Mark Dindal. However, in 1998, Allers left the project due to creative differences. The project was reworked into The Emperor's New Groove.
Meanwhile, Allers collaborated with Julie Taymor and Irene Mecchi on the Broadway musical adaptation of The Lion King. Both he and Mecchi were nominated for a Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical. Later, Allers directed Open Season and The Little Matchgirl, both released in 2006. In 2014, he wrote and directed The Prophet. Allers died on January 17, 2026 at the age of 76.
Early life
Roger Allers was born on June 29, 1949, in Rye, New York, to George Allers, who worked as an equestrian, and his mother, Shirley Williams, who ran the home. When he was six years old, his family relocated in Scottsdale, Arizona.Allers became a fan of animation, at the age of five, after seeing Disney's Peter Pan. From there, he decided he wanted to pursue a career in animation, and work alongside Walt Disney. A few years later, at age eight, Allers was sent off to Disneyland for a do-it-yourself animation kit. He recalled: "There was a part of Disneyland back then called the art corner, and they sold animation kits. There were books on the principles of animation and on how to draw the characters. You could even put together your own light table. And they gave you exposure sheets."
When Allers was a high school student, his father gave him a 8mm film camera, which he used to film special effects movies. He added: "I discovered the principle of double exposure, so my friends and I turned ourselves into ghosts. I also made stop-motion. But it wasn't very fancy. I just had to hit the button to get a frame!" However, Allers felt discouraged about achieving his dream of being an animator when he had heard of Disney's death in 1966.
Career
1974–1985: Animator
Despite not getting the chance to meet Walt Disney, Allers graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Arizona State University in 1971. For the next two years, he moved to Greece and during his time, Allers met Leslee Hackenson, his future wife, in Crete. For a time, they lived in a cave and sold paintings and crafts that they made to earn money for food and other supplies.Allers moved back to the United States, and stayed in Boston when he audited animation courses at Harvard University. When one course was over, Allers created a 15-second animated short film. Allers used his short film with his portfolio and accepted a job with Lisberger Studios. In 1974, Allers was hired as an animator and worked for several projects, including Sesame Street, The Electric Company, Make a Wish, and various other commercials for the Boston Pops.
In 1978, he relocated to Los Angeles with Steven Lisberger to work on a feature film titled Animalympics to which he provided story work, character design and animation for the film. Three years later, Allers worked as a storyboard artist for Tron. In 1980, Allers and his family moved to Toronto, Canada, where he worked for Nelvana Studios as an animator on a feature titled Rock & Rule. During his two-year stay, he reflected: "I had a miserable time there! I just didn't get along with the upper management. I loved the talent. But I just didn't fit in."
Through his friend Bill Kroyer, in 1985, Allers relocated to Tokyo to work on the Japanese-American co-produced animated feature, Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland. Based on the comic strip Little Nemo by Winsor McCay, Ray Bradbury was adapting the script at the time. However, it was a tumultuous production; nevertheless, Allers provided character design, preliminary animation, and story development. He also served as an animation director overseeing the Japanese animators.
1985–1991: Story artist
In 1985, Allers returned to Los Angeles in 1985; there, David Stephan, an animator, contacted him to explain that Disney was looking for a storyboard artist to work on Oliver & Company. Interested, Allers applied for the position, although his animation portfolio was in transit from Tokyo. Allers was interviewed by Don Hahn and George Scribner, where he was asked to draw some sample character model sheets as a tryout and develop a new portfolio. He was hired shortly thereafter.Allers worked on Oliver & Company for two years, and near the end of his involvement, he was the head of story. He recalled, "The tone of the story changed drastically while we worked on it. George Scribner's original idea was a lot rougher, a lot tougher. Fagin was kind of mean-spirited, and the dogs were really tough, and it was really a hard, hard film." He left Oliver & Company during mid-production after he had heard Howard Ashman and Alan Menken's demo recordings of the songs for The Little Mermaid.
An adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale of the same title, Allers felt John Musker and Ron Clements's script for The Little Mermaid was well-structured with defined characters and themes. During production, Allers storyboarded the musical number "Poor Unfortunate Souls". He also mentored Brenda Chapman, then a CalArts graduate, and worked with her on several sequences together. Allers later storyboarded scenes for The Prince and the Pauper and The Rescuers Down Under.
For Beauty and the Beast, Allers was less enthused to work on the project until he changed his mind when he heard Ashman and Menken's songs. Then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner insisted Beauty and the Beast would be the first Disney animated film to use a screenwriter. Jeffrey Katzenberg, the chairman for Walt Disney Pictures, selected Linda Woolverton to write the script. Meanwhile, Allers was appointed as head of story, leading a team of story artists to illustrate sketches from Woolverton's screenplay. In her script, Woolverton had written a scene, in which Belle pushes pins into a map of the world, symbolizing the places she wanted to visit, while waiting for her father Maurice to return. Later, she attended a story meeting to learn her scene had been drastically revised to have Belle decorate a cake.
Infuriated, Woolverton protested to Peter Schneider, then-president of Walt Disney Feature Animation. Schneider suggested she and Allers worked together more closely in the same room. Throughout the storyboarding process, Woolverton arrived in Allers' office, which he shared with Brenda Chapman, to discuss the scenes that needed to be rewritten. From there, relations between Woolverton and the story team improved as she became more accustomed to the storyboarding process. When he reflected on the experience, Allers stated: "For the scriptwriter it must be frustrating to be reworking and reworking. I guess that's what's the storyboard process is. That's why we put our sketches up in little pins, because it all comes down, lots of times. You rework it, and rework it, and craft it."
1991–1994: ''The Lion King''
When Beauty and the Beast was nearly finished, Allers joined the King of the Jungle project as a director, alongside George Scribner. Allers attended brainstorming sessions with Scribner and Woolverton. However, Musker and Clements asked Allers to help storyboard sequences for Aladdin. Allers worked on Aladdin for eight months and briefly worked on a version of Swan Lake. However, Schneider called Allers and told him he would return to the King of the Jungle project.In October 1991, Allers rejoined King of the Jungle, in which he recruited Brenda Chapman, who would become the film's head of story. A month later, several of the lead crew members, including Allers, Scribner, Chapman, Lisa Keene, and production designer Chris Sanders took a safari trip to Hell's Gate National Park in Kenya, in order to study and gain an appreciation of the environment for the film. After six months of story development work, Scribner decided to leave the project, as he disagreed with the decision to turn the film into a musical, as Scribner's intention was to make a documentary-like film more focused on natural aspects. On April Fools' Day 1992, Rob Minkoff was added as a co-director.
Don Hahn joined the project as producer, but felt the early scripts lacked a clear theme. After they had established the theme of "leaving childhood and facing up to the realities of the world", they felt Woolverton's scripts needed more revisions. Allers and Minkoff formed a "brain trust" to solidify the narrative and emphasize the drama surrounding the theme of responsibility. The brain trust included themselves, Hahn, Sanders, Chapman, and Beauty and the Beast directors Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale. The team held a brainstorming session for two days, in which they devised a new story outline. During those meetings, they outlined several aspects of the story, including Simba's psychological and emotional journey and decided to have Mufasa return as a ghost. Allers also changed the character Rafiki from a more serious court advisor into a wacky shaman. By the summer of 1992, screenwriters Irene Mecchi and Jonathan Roberts were hired to write the revised screenplay.
Retitled The Lion King, Allers and Minkoff drew visual inspiration from classic American western paintings, such as those from Frederic Remington and Charles Marion Russell, and widescreen films from John Ford and David Lean. Throughout production, their directorial process began with several sequences divided between Allers and Minkoff. Each director brought their own vision to the sequences, but there was a constant exchange of viewpoints to better ensure a stylistic uniformity.
The Lion King premiered on June 15, 1994 and received critical praise for its animation and mature story. The Lion King became the highest-grossing film released in 1994 and was the highest-grossing animated film, in which it earned over $700 million worldwide. The film won two Academy Awards for Best Original Song and Best Original Score.
Despite the praise, The Lion King was believed to have shared similarities with Osamu Tezuka's 1950 manga Jungle Emperor Leo, which became known in the United States as Kimba the White Lion. In July 1994, Minkoff told the Los Angeles Times: "I know for a fact that has never been discussed as long as I've been on the project." In 2015, Allers clarified he was made aware of the similarities as The Lion King was being completed. He further stated: "I could certainly understand Kimbas creators feeling angry if they felt we had stolen ideas from them. If I had been inspired by Kimba, I would certainly acknowledge my inspiration. All I can offer is my respect to those artists and say that their creation has its loyal admirers and its assured place in animation history."