'The Lion King' co-director Roger Allers dies at 76: 'A true pillar of the Disney Animation renaissance'

Roger Allers, a seasoned Disney filmmaker who co-directed the archetypal “The Lion King,” died Saturday. He was 76.

The Academy Award-nominated director’s decades-spanning enactment astatine Disney besides included turns arsenic a writer, storyboard creator and animator for beloved films specified arsenic “The Little Mermaid,” “Beauty and the Beast” and “Aladdin.”

Allers’ decease was announced by his workfellow Dave Bossert, a erstwhile Disney animator.

“Roger was an extraordinarily talented creator and filmmaker, a existent pillar of the Disney Animation renaissance,” Bossert wrote Sunday connected Facebook.

Bossert described his longtime collaborator arsenic “one of the kindest radical you could anticipation to cognize and enactment alongside.”

“Roger had a joyful, luminous spirit, and the satellite is dimmer without him,” Bossert wrote. “Rest successful peace, my friend. Until we conscionable again connected the different side.”

Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger besides paid tribute to the director, whom helium called “a originative visionary whose galore contributions to Disney volition unrecorded connected for generations to come.”

“[Allers] understood the powerfulness of large storytelling — however unforgettable characters, emotion, and euphony tin travel unneurotic to make thing timeless,” Iger said Sunday successful a connection connected Instagram.

“His enactment helped specify an epoch of animation that continues to animate audiences astir the world, and we are profoundly grateful for everything helium gave to Disney,” the enforcement wrote.

Allers’ tenure astatine Disney began much than 40 years ago, erstwhile helium worked connected the storyboard squad for the sci-fi thriller “Tron” (1982). He went connected to play “a pivotal relation successful the Disney Animation renaissance of the precocious ‘80s and passim the ‘90s,” Walt Disney Animation Studios wrote Tuesday successful a societal media post.

The amusement multihyphenate’s crown accomplishment came successful 1994, erstwhile helium and “The Lion King” co-director Rob Minkoff brought to beingness the movie that erstwhile Times movie professional Justin Chang referred to arsenic “one of Disney’s biggest gambles.”

“The Lion King” boasted an estimated $42-million home opening weekend, the studio’s largest ever astatine the time. It is inactive the highest-grossing traditionally animated movie of each time.

Allers — calved successful 1949 successful Rye, N.Y. — looked backmost connected the film’s occurrence successful 2011, telling The Times that it “gave an accidental for a batch of young animators who hadn’t had a accidental to pb a character. So they were fired up to bash a bully occupation — it was rather an inclusive and originative circle.”

“Everyone was listened to,” Allers said. “When it came to fruition and everyone could spot the connection it was putting retired and the bosom the movie had that went connected to beryllium embraced by the assemblage ... it was precise gratifying. I americium inactive benignant of overwhelmed by the response.”

Allers is survived by his children, Leah and Aidan, and his partner, Genaro, according to the Hollywood Reporter.