July is Disability Pride Month, and along with it serving as a reminder for more of us to check out all the great movies starring people with disabilities, there are so many ways those with these identities have contributed to Hollywood films behind the scenes. One story that I just learned has to do with the making of Sony Pictures Animation’s GOAT, a 2026 movie release from earlier this year. I just found out the movie assembled an entire team of disabled employees to loop the film. Don’t know what “looping” is? Neither did I until I came across their story.
The Cool Way Sony’s Goat Made History For People With Disabilities
GOAT is basically an underdog sports movie told creatively in a fictional world where co-ed predator animals play together in something very close to basketball called Roar-ball. And the animated movie, which is now available to stream with a Netflix subscription, featured the first-ever all-disability loop group to work on a major studio film, per Variety.
I had never heard about this before, but a loop group supplies the voices in the background of a scene that needs it. And since GOAT primarily takes place at Roar-ball games, there was a lot of looping to do. Nic Novicki, the founder of this groundbreaking loop group, said this about how the job can cater to anyone:
It doesn’t matter what your disability is or what you look like. Your voice is your instrument… You could play anything.
Novicki and The Disability Loop Group had been trying to get on a feature film for years, and GOAT was the first opportunity for them to finally do so. I love how the movie itself is about an unexpected character (a goat) who gets to play in the big leagues, and behind the scenes, a group of people with disabilities got to work all together to provide a necessary service for the film.
I Had No Idea What Looping Was Before Learning This Story
Not only did The Disability Loop Group achieve something new in Hollywood worth celebrating during Disability Pride Month, but the story itself taught me about one aspect of filmmaking I didn’t know about before. Here’s Novicki’s explanation of the loop group’s job:
We’re doing improv, different accents, different elements — it’s almost like an orchestra… We’re coming in with different voices and sounds, sometimes collectively, sometimes singularly, to create the atmosphere of the whole movie.
While a live-action movie might have ambient sound that can be recorded on location if a basketball game was part of a movie – GOAT had to start from scratch. The loop group had to take the time to help create the world of the movie through constructing things like chants, background chatter, crowd energy and reactions. It sounds like a meticulous job, and a fun one, and I’m happy I know about it now.
The disabled are still underrepresented in movies and TV, and this story is a small but cool example of some of the unsung jobs and people in Hollywood we don’t highlight enough. Congrats to The Disability Loop Group. I hope we hear about them getting more work in future movies and/or TV shows.