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This Mouse Will Never Stop Working! Exec producer Paul Rudish discusses his new Disney+ series The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse.
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ast month, a certain world-famous rodent celebrated a big birthday. That’s right, Disney’s resourceful, optimistic and ageless Mickey Mouse celebrated his 92nd birthday on November 18 (that’s the date he made his cinematic debut in Steamboat Willie in 1928). Disney marked this impressive anniversary by introducing a new series of shorts under the Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse banner, led by the creative vision of multiple Emmy and Annie-winning writer/producer/ director Paul Rudish, who was also behind the cabler’s hugely successful and acclaimed Mickey Mouse series (2013-2019). The new show finds Minnie, Donald, Daisy, Goofy and Pluto continue their wild and zany adventures in each of the seven-minute shorts. These new timeless tales are inspired by various lands at Disney parks, and feature cameos by classic Disney characters. Two new shorts roll out on Disney+ each Friday, and 10 shorts overall will premiere this season. Then, 10 more shorts are scheduled to debut this summer. Christopher Willis, the Emmy-nominated composer of the Mickey Mouse shorts, also provides the music for this series. Rudish and his gifted team began working
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on the new series about a year ago, right on the heels of Disney Channel’s Mickey Mouse series, which ran for five seasons and won seven Emmys and 21 Annie Awards. “We’ve retooled the format a bit as these shorts are longer,” he tells us. “But they are very much in line with the Mickey shorts as far as humor and style.
Inspired by Parks and Heritage For this new enterprise, Rudish and his team found inspiration in Disney history and many of the studio’s beloved films and theme parks. “We decided to look at doing various stories that could possibly take place in different lands of Disneyland so we could do more genre pieces,” he says. “For instance, there’s one that could take place in Frontierland, possibly in Fantasyland and Tomorrowland. We have a short called ‘House of Tomorrow’ that’s based on an old Disneyland attraction called House of the Future. We thought that was a
really neat set piece. There’s a loose association with some of the lands and an occasional cameo from other Disney characters will pop in here and there along the way.” The production team included about 30 people at the Disney Television Animation studio in Glendale and another 30 or so at Mercury Filmworks in Canada. “Mercury is our animation production partner in Ottawa, and they’re great,” he notes. “This series is actually a smaller team compared to a lot of productions. Like many animation professionals around the world, Rudish and his crew had to quickly adjust to the new realities of working from home, due to this past year’s COVID pandemic restrictions. “Working from home has definitely had an impact on production, but we’ve managed to keep everything moving,” says the exec producer. “It’s not as great as being at the studio where you can hang out with everybody and talk to everybody on the spot. We’ve
‘Use curiosity to feed you and drive you to learn more things … Take advantage of opportunities that come your direction and learn as much about the process as you can along the way.’ — Writer, designer, director & exec producer Paul Rudish
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