Wreck-It Ralph: Disney reveals how it bagged game character cameos

Wreck-It Ralph is the new animated film from Disney, starring Ralph a disheartened game villain who leaves his title and goes on an advennture. It also features cameos from iconic game characters such as Q*Bert, Zangief, Bowser and more.

Disney has revealed how it managed to convince game publishers to allow their characters to be shown in a new interview.

Speaking with IGN, Wreck-It Ralph producer Clark Spencer explained how Disney approached publishers to talk about getting game cameos into the film.

Spencer admits that the issue of copyright and ownership would be an issue, and how his team approached publishers at E3, "We went out and met with people in person, which I think is the key. "When people came in for E3, we would actually meet with all of the companies and talk about the movie."

"From the very beginning we said, 'We want to be authentic to your character. What we would like to do is put in an approval process where you look at our animation and you say that we're being true to the character.'" As the creators noted, most companies were all for it", Spencer added.

"We did have kind of a check-in process," Spencer concluded, "where we would show them the footage and say, 'What do you think? Is it good?' At one point, [Nintendo] said, 'Bowser's much bigger than that. He's way bigger than Zangief.' We were like, 'Okay, we'll make him bigger. How's that?' They'd say, 'Yes, that’s good -- but he wouldn’t drink his coffee like that. He wouldn’t make that mouth.'"

"Of course, then people from Sega said, 'Well, Doctor Robotnik is bigger.' They wanted their characters bigger and bigger. We were going to end up with these giants in a room, with Ralph as this little guy. But I think that stuff really helped. I looked back on our original animation before the Nintendo notes, and it was like, 'You know, he does look more like Bowser now.'"

Wreck-It Ralph hits cinemas November 2.