Trivia / Mighty Joe Young

• Adored by the Network: The 1998 film enjoyed a healthy fondness on Disney channels in the early 2000s, enough to be a fast pick for Disney+.
• California Doubling: The African scenes were shot in Hawaii.
• Creator-Driven Successor: The original film was directed by original King Kong directors Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, the former also creating the story and producing. Also involved was Kong's special effects artist Willis O'Brien and Carl Denham's actor Robert Armstrong as Max O'Hara. It is yet another giant ape story from the team, but in contrast to Kong much happier.
• Fake Nationality: In both versions, Jill Young was born and raised in Africa. Terry Moore was born in Glendale, California. At least Charlize Theron is South African. Naveen Andrews plays Pindi, an African, in the 1998 remake. Andrews is a British Indian from London.
• Follow the Leader: Averted by Peter Jackson, who was about to start producing a remake of King Kong in 1996, but held off for several years thanks to the 1998 remake's release.
• Genre-Killer: The 1998 remake of Godzilla dealt a heavy blow to the giant monster genre, this film's failure dealt the finishing blow that would last for several decades.
• Market-Based Title: Released in Britain as Mighty Joe while several other countries used some variation of My Friend Joe or Joe the Giant Gorilla.
• On-Set Injury: The director of photography Don Peterman and camera operator Ray de la Motte were injured while preparing a crane shot in July 1997 in Thousand Oaks, California. Both suffered extensive neck and head injuries.
• What Could Have Been: An Animated Adaptation was planned in the late 90s, but it was canned after the remake bombed.
• Word of God:
  • After Gorillas in the Mist and Baby's Day Out, Rick Baker swore never to work on ape-centric projects anymore. However, his love for the original 1949 film and seeing working on this film as a chance to redeem himself for the 1976 King Kong remake changed Baker's mind. This is the last movie he created an animatronic gorilla suit for.
  • The addition of Strasser as the villain is considered the most notable change from the original film, which didn't have an antagonist. According to Underwood, having a villain in the remake was a way to update the story for contemporary audiences, help progress the plot, and give a reason for Joe's "rampage" after removing the original film's nightclub element. Adding Strasser also acted as something structural to replace the 1949 film's outdated "kitschy" moments and explore the plight of gorillas. Having Joe brought to America to get placed in an animal conservancy instead of being exploited as a nightclub act was another change to keep in line with societal changes and make the film more accessible.
  • According to screenwriter Mark Rosenthal, he was involved in primatology at one point. He visited Birute Galdikas and went to her camp. Out of a personal interest in giving the film some resonance concerning wild primates' condition, he and co-writer Lawrence Konner added elements of Dian Fossey's story.
  • "Windsong" was written in English by Will Jennings and then translated into Swahili. The original lyrics were: "Sing a song and for a moment you will be visited by the wind. Sing a song and for a moment dream sweetly of the wind. Sleep now until the night is dawn. The wind and the night song, they are there. However the song, my child, will go on forever."
  • Ron Underwood said that one of the main reasons he wanted to direct this film was having a non-verbal protagonist with lots of personality and emotion: "I wanted to explore all of that purely on a visual level, and that was exciting and challenging."
  • For the climax at the carnival, the production built a full-sized, fully-operational Ferris wheel that, according to Underwood, fell over on cue in one take.
  • Konner said that Strasser losing two fingers to Joe and swearing revenge on him is an homage to Captain Ahab losing his leg to Moby Dick.
  • After screening Gorillas in the Mist, Rick Baker sat with his team and made a list of aspects they wished to improve upon in future projects. One aspect was the gorillas' eyes; Baker felt they had little life behind them. Knowing that Joe would have extreme close-ups in this film, Baker gave Joe eyes with a realistic "corneal bulge" that made matters harder for the blinking mechanism. Another element was how wide real gorillas could open their mouths; Gorillas in the Mist had one head with a mouth that could open and close but only open to a certain point and another sculpted in the wide-open position. For this film, Baker and his team made Joe able to close his mouth and open it wide for his roars seamlessly.
  • While discussing the finale, Rick Baker suggested watching the original film and analyzing the special effects, leading to Ray Harryhausen and Terry Moore's cameo in the movie.
  • Before agreeing to work on the movie, Rick Baker had two conditions: First, John Alexander had to play adult Joe, and Verne Troyer had to play baby Joe. Secondly, the film had to have a heart. It was initially more of a "monster-on-the-loose" movie, so Baker and his team contributed ideas to improve the story; Cinovation crew member Chad Waters came up with Jill and Joe's hide-and-seek game.
  • According to Rick Baker, he never made a hydraulic character before this movie but made two for it. He feels that managing to make a better gorilla suit than before was "the most satisfying thing" about working on this film.
  • In the 1949 film, the characters accept Joe's size and never question it. The remake explains it through the "guardian of the mountain" legend, where a larger-than-normal gorilla appears around every hundred generations in a particular gorilla population, destined to protect its family from outside threats.
  • According to Konner, the movie's theme is leaving well enough alone—"the less interference, the better." The original film has people tampering with nature by taking Joe to the States to exploit him, similar to King Kong. However, the remake has Joe brought to America by people with genuinely good intentions to help him, only for their efforts to backfire anyway.
  • According to Rosenthal, two of the film's original producers were Wolfgang Petersen and Gail Katz, who were working on Air Force One.
• The song heard during Jill and Gregg's date on the boardwalk is "Beautiful Dreamer," Joe's favorite tune in the original film.
• This movie is notable for being the second to progress photo-realistic CG fur in film, after Jumanji.
• In an early second draft of the screenplay, dated August 24, 1995, Jill Young was named Malika Young instead.
• This movie was intended for a summer 1998 release before getting pushed to the 1998 Christmas season.
• Gorillas notably have individually unique nostril shapes. Matt Rose, key artist and head sculptor at Rick Baker's Cinovation, gave Joe "J" shaped nose prints.
• This is the last Disney live-action film to have the plain text-based "WALT DISNEY PICTURES" logo in the opening and ending instead of the well-known 1990 Blue Castle logo.
• This movie is the second Disney remake of a non-Disney film—Jungle 2 Jungle was the first.
• Early in pre-production, the visual effects supervisor Hoyt Yeatman collaborated with Kodak, creating new film stock that helped advance blue-screen compositing.
• Konner and Rosenthal fought Disney and the Writers Guild to ensure that Ruth Rose and Merian C. Cooper got mentioned in the credits. Fortunately, Disney agreed.
• Rick Baker and John Alexander have deleted cameos. After the climax in the original script, there's a montage of people giving and collecting donations for Joe. Baker's cameo had him "standing on a street corner in a really cheesy gorilla suit, holding a gorilla head full of money." Then John Alexander asks, 'Is this money for Joe?' I say, 'Yeah,' and he gives Baker some money and says, 'Nice suit!' And Baker said, 'I made it myself.'"

---