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ALADDIN Genie Behind The Scenes Blu-ray Bonus Clips

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Disney Reveals Behind-the-Scenes Genie Footage

Just weeks after Guy Ritchie’s live-action Aladdin cleared $1 billion at the global box office, Walt Disney Studios started rolling out promotional clips ahead of the film’s September 10, 2019 release on Blu-ray and Digital HD. The footage pulls from the disc’s dedicated bonus featurette, “A Friend Like Genie,” and gives fans their first real look at how Will Smith built his version of a character Robin Williams defined for a generation. It’s a short reel, but it’s packed with detail on the costume work, the visual effects, and the on-set chemistry between Smith and his co-stars.

• The clips are drawn from “A Friend Like Genie,” a 4-minute, 31-second bonus featurette included on the September 10, 2019 Blu-ray and Digital HD release.
• The footage centers on Will Smith’s approach to modernizing the Genie with hip-hop-inflected delivery and comedic improv, layered against the visual effects work required to render the character on screen.
• Production designer Gemma Jackson and costume designer Michael Wilkinson are spotlighted for the character’s physical creation, alongside on-set moments with Mena Massoud and Naomi Scott.

Inside “A Friend Like Genie”

The featurette’s title borrows from the 1992 animated film’s signature number, and that’s clearly intentional — the bonus content leans into comparisons between Smith’s take and Williams’ original performance without pretending it’s a replacement. Rather than treating the role as an impression, the clips show Smith building his own rhythm for the character, working scenes for timing and cadence on set before visual effects artists layered in the digital Genie’s blue-skinned form over his live-action performance.

That blend of practical acting and post-production effects work is really the throughline of the whole reel. Smith performed his scenes in character, on set, opposite Massoud and Scott, and the footage cuts between those raw takes and the finished, effects-heavy shots audiences saw in theaters — a useful reminder of how much of the “digital” Genie actually started as a physical performance.

The Craft Behind the Character

Beyond Smith’s performance, the bonus clips give credit to the design team that shaped the Genie’s look before a single effect was added. Production designer Gemma Jackson and costume designer Michael Wilkinson both appear discussing how the character’s silhouette and palette were worked out, tying the new film’s visual language back to the animated original while giving Ritchie’s live-action version its own texture.

A Friend Like Genie, the featurette anchoring the clips, breaks the character down in just 4 minutes and 31 seconds.

The interplay between Smith, Massoud’s Aladdin, and Scott’s Jasmine also gets screen time in the promo material, showing how the cast worked off each other during scenes that would later be finished with heavy digital work. It’s a rare instance where the bonus content spends as much time on collaboration as it does on any single star.

Additional Features Included in September Release

“A Friend Like Genie” is just one piece of a fuller bonus package Disney lined up for the home release. The disc also includes “Guy Ritchie: A Cinematic Genie,” a video journal shot by Massoud during production, deleted scenes including one titled “Wrong Wishes,” a blooper reel, and a cut Alan Menken duet called “Desert Moon” that didn’t make the theatrical version. For fans who followed the film through its theatrical run, the extras give a clearer picture of how much material Ritchie and the studio shot but ultimately left on the cutting room floor.

Disney’s promotional push for the Blu-ray follows a familiar playbook the studio has used across its recent live-action remakes and theme-park-adjacent projects, dribbling out behind-the-scenes footage to keep a billion-dollar release relevant in the weeks before it hits shelves. It’s the same instinct that’s driven coverage of ongoing Disney theme park projects — give fans a reason to stay engaged with the property between its big theatrical moment and its next chapter.

With the disc landing September 10, the real test is whether “A Friend Like Genie” and the rest of the bonus reel change how audiences remember Smith’s performance once they can watch the on-set footage side by side with the finished film — a comparison theatrical audiences never got to make in real time.