22 Facts About Don Hahn

1.

Donald Paul Hahn was born on November 26,1955 and is an American film producer who is credited with producing some of the most successful animated films in recent history, including Disney's Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King.

2.

When Don Hahn was three, his family moved to Bellflower, California, where he went to school and shot his first animated shorts in the high school film club.

3.

Don Hahn's family then moved to Burbank, California when he was a teenager.

4.

Don Hahn graduated from North Hollywood High School in 1973, went on to study music at Los Angeles Valley College, and majored in Music and minored in fine art at California State University Northridge.

5.

Don Hahn was a percussionist in the Los Angeles Junior Philharmonic Orchestra.

6.

Don Hahn worked as a drum head tester for Remo Inc and was the percussion instructor at Notre Dame High School to put himself through college.

7.

Don Hahn began his career in animation working for Disney Legend Wolfgang Reitherman as an assistant director on The Fox and the Hound.

8.

Don Hahn worked closely with director Don Bluth on the production of Pete's Dragon and even worked in Bluth's garage on the animated short Banjo the Woodpile Cat.

9.

In 1989, Don Hahn made his first mark as producer for Disney and Amblin Entertainment's first Roger Rabbit short, Tummy Trouble, producing along with Steven Spielberg, Kathleen Kennedy, and Frank Marshall.

10.

Don Hahn then became the producer for the benchmark animated feature, 1991's Beauty and the Beast, which was the first animated film to be nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture.

11.

Don Hahn directed Steve Martin, James Earl Jones, Quincy Jones, Itzhak Perlman, and Angela Lansbury in the host sequences of Fantasia 2000.

12.

In 2003, Don Hahn teamed up with Lion King co-director Rob Minkoff to produce The Haunted Mansion starring Eddie Murphy, making it Don Hahn's first live-action film to produce.

13.

In 2006, Don Hahn was interim head of Disney's animation division during its successful merger with Pixar.

14.

Don Hahn received his second Academy Award nomination that same year in the category of Best Animated Short for The Little Match Girl, an adaptation of the classic Hans Christian Andersen tale which was originally intended for inclusion in a version of Fantasia.

15.

Don Hahn was Executive Producer for the landmark nature film "Earth" the premiere film project from the Disneynature film label.

16.

Don Hahn was introduced to the crowd, and told them all the history of the Lion King franchise and informed the audience that the new film as well as its follow up series will continue the original film's story, before introducing the executive producer of the new film; Ford Riley.

17.

When Don Hahn took a year sabbatical from his job at Disney, he set out to make a very personal film about photographer Mike Carroll, one of the first photojournalists to uncover the pediatric AIDS epidemic in post communist eastern Europe.

18.

Don Hahn filmed extensively in Bucharest, Transylvania, and in Carroll's home town of Boston.

19.

Don Hahn directed the film, narrated by Walt Disney's daughter Diane Disney Miller.

20.

Don Hahn serves as executive producer of numerous Disneynature documentaries such as Earth, Oceans, and African Cats all of which placed in the top five nature movies of all time.

21.

Don Hahn is Executive Producer on the Alastair Fothergill, Mark Linfield directed Chimpanzee.

22.

Early in his career, Don Hahn set up and managed the Disney School of Animation, an internal training program for a generation of young artists coming up within the Disney Studio animation department.