{"id":520267,"date":"2026-03-13T02:03:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T02:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/520267\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T02:03:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T02:03:08","slug":"goat-first-major-studio-film-voiced-by-an-all-disability-loop-group","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/520267\/","title":{"rendered":"‘GOAT’ First Major Studio Film Voiced by an All-Disability Loop Group"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIn Sony Pictures Animation<\/a>\u2018s \u201cGOAT<\/a>,\u201d the roar of the crowd filling the theater speakers carries a significance most audiences won\u2019t know. Those chants, crowd noise and ambient arena energy were provided by nearly two dozen actors with disabilities, making history as the first-ever all-disability loop group<\/a> to work on a major studio film.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Disability Loop Group, formed through the Easterseals Disability Film Challenge<\/a> (EDFC), made its feature film debut in \u201cGOAT,\u201d the original animated action-comedy now in theaters. It\u2019s a milestone that Nic Novicki, the EDFC\u2019s founder and director, has been building toward for over a decade.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cLike Will in \u2018GOAT,\u2019 these talented artists earned a chance to show what they can do,\u201d said Novicki.<\/p>\n

\n\tA little person and working actor whose credits include \u201cBoardwalk Empire,\u201d \u201cThe Sopranos,\u201d and \u201cThe Good Doctor,\u201d he launched the film challenge 13 years ago after noticing a persistent gap in opportunity for disabled creators in Hollywood. \u201cSeeing so many people with disabilities recognized for their skill and invited to contribute to a major studio film is truly exciting,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tA loop group supplies the ambient voices that fill out a film\u2019s soundscape \u2014 from crowd noise to background chatter and reaction sounds. For \u201cGOAT,\u201d which follows an underdog goat chasing his dream of playing professional roarball in an all-animal world, the group helped construct the film\u2019s arena sequences from scratch, building chants and crowd energy across two days of recording on the Sony lot.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe\u2019re doing improv, different accents, different elements \u2014 it\u2019s almost like an orchestra,\u201d Novicki said. \u201cWe\u2019re coming in with different voices and sounds, sometimes collectively, sometimes singularly, to create the atmosphere of the whole movie.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe group grew out of a workshop held on the Sony Pictures Entertainment lot, where EDFC participants received coaching and feedback from animation executives and casting directors. Sony Pictures Entertainment has been a key sponsor and host of the challenge for seven years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tNovicki had just voiced Lego Spider-Man in \u201cSpider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,\u201d and fellow EDFC participant Danielle Perez \u2014 a wheelchair user \u2014 had been cast as Sun-Spider in the same film after Academy Award-winning producers Phil Lord and Chris Miller discovered her through the challenge.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThose back-to-back castings confirmed what Novicki had long believed. Loop work represented a unique opportunity for the disability community, where the barriers that define so much of on-camera casting simply don\u2019t apply.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter what your disability is or what you look like. Your voice is your instrument,\u201d he said. \u201cYou could play anything.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tThe group, coordinated by director and autism spectrum advocate Brock Powell, includes actors with a wide range of visible and invisible disabilities. \u201cGOAT,\u201d which features the voices of Caleb McLaughlin, Gabrielle Union, Stephen Curry and Jennifer Hudson, is only the first of multiple studio projects for the group, with additional credits currently under way.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI feel so honored to be a part of this and to be a part of the disability community,\u201d Novicki said. \u201cThere are so many talented people, and this is a dream come to life. People with disabilities are getting hired, getting opportunities \u2014 and I really feel like that\u2019s going to continue to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tRegistration for the 2026 EDFC competition is currently open<\/a> and will run March 24-29. The awards ceremony will be held May 7 at Sony Pictures Studios.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Sony Pictures Animation\u2018s \u201cGOAT,\u201d the roar of the crowd filling the theater speakers carries a significance most…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":520268,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[234901,234902,88,29647,206,3017],"class_list":["post-520267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-disability-loop-group","tag-easterseals-disability-film-challenge","tag-entertainment","tag-goat","tag-movies","tag-sony-pictures-animation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=520267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520267\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/520268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=520267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=520267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=520267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}