- We started the Ratatouille musical.
- An this is that story.
My name is Emily Jacobsen
and this all started in August of 2020.
One day in my apartment,
I was reading an article about the new Ratatouille ride
coming to Disney World
and that's sort of got the movie in my head.
So afterwards, when I was cleaning up my apartment,
I just started singing this song to myself
about the main character of the movie, Remy.
♪ Remy, the ratatouille, the rat of all my dreams ♪
And I found the song pretty funny
and decided to make a TikTok out of it.
And when I recorded the song, I sped it up,
so my voice sounded a little more cartoon-like.
♪ Remy, the ratatouille, the rat of all my dreams ♪
And I posted it on TikTok,
sent it off to family and friends,
I'm pretty much forgot about it.
It was just for a joke, a quick laugh.
Fast forward two months later,
I woke up one morning to hundreds of notifications.
It turned out that TikTok superstar, Brittany Broski
had posted a video and on one side
it was the characters from the Ratatouille movie dancing
and on the other side, she was dancing along with them.
The background music was my little joke song from August
and suddenly there were all these people
flooding over to my video and liking, commenting,
tagging their friends.
Every day there were thousands of people
using my song in their own videos,
and that kind of exposure caught the attention of
Daniel Mertzlufft, who was a composer arranger,
overall musical genius.
- My name is Daniel Mertzlufft,
I'm a working composer arranger.
and when all of this stuff was shut down because of COVID
I think me, like every other person
was longing for theater in some way.
I became aware of Emily's video when a friend of mine,
who also went viral on TikTok for his song,
"I'm An Accountant",
tagged me in the comments and said,
"Is this the next grocery store musical?"
Which was my big musical video
that went viral over the summer.
So I listened to Emily's video,
I thought it was funny, thought it was charming
and said, maybe.
♪ Remy, the ratatouille, the rat of all my dreams ♪
We have lots of strings, French horn, lots of percussion,
We have the tubular bells and glockenspiel
all of that to bring us into the world.
- And it was in that moment
that the Ratatouille musical movement was born.
So suddenly at that point,
every single video on my for you page
was about the Ratatouille musical.
♪ Anyone can cook ♪
♪ If you want to make it in the kitchen ♪
- Yes m'am.
♪ Don't waste your whiskers on dreaming ♪
♪ Remy, the ratatouille, the rat ♪
For a while, I was kind of afraid that
I was gonna get some sort of legal notice
or cease and desist,
but then suddenly people from
the Disney World started joining in.
Patton Oswalt, the voice of Remy,
he was tagging the director of the movie,
Brad Bird, who was chiming in.
And then all of a sudden Disney popped up
on their Disney Parks TikTok account
with a video they called the unofficial audition
for the Ratatouille musical.
The next day, Pixar on Instagram
was posting a picture of Remy
and hashtagging it with my lyrics.
So there were suddenly all these nods here and there
that made me think,
all right Disney's not necessarily mad about this.
This could be a good thing.
- We've both had multiple interviews a day.
People asking me what my next projects are,
record labels wondering if
I have things that I'm working on,
managers, agents.
- If Disney were to kind of bring this to fruition
in some way, they're kind of in a weird position.
I don't think there's ever been a situation where
really the community at large
has taken such a role in creating a product.
There would be a lot of demand I think,
to use some of what has been created
and contributed on TikTok.
If we've learned anything from the movie,
I think it's that great art can come from anywhere
and that's what has happened on TikTok
with the Ratatouille musical
♪ Ratatouille, may the world remember your name ♪