Movies sometimes languish in development hell for years before making it to the big screen,
and many more end up canceled somewhere along the way.
This holds true even at Disney, where the costs of traditional or computer animation
can spell doom for a troubled production.
Here's a look at some of the most intriguing projects Disney has shelved over the years
and the reasons why audiences are unlikely to ever see them.
Gigantic
Following the Disney tradition of drawing from classic folk stories, Gigantic was planned
as a retelling of the English fairy tale "Jack and the Beanstalk."
This wouldn't have been the first time that Disney had tackled the classic story.
In 1947, the studio released the war-era package film Fun and Fancy Free.
That movie included two musical animated shorts, one of which was the popular Mickey and the
Beanstalk.
You remember that one, right?
Where Donald Duck tries to slaughter a cow?
"Nice bossy bossy bosssy…."
"Nice ole cowsey wowsey"
DONALD!
They don't make em like they used to, eh?
Wowzer… anyway…
Gigantic was announced with fanfare at the 2015 D23 Expo, and it seemed the project was
already well underway; Tangled director Nathan Greno was on board to lead the film's development,
later joined by Inside Out screenwriter Meg LeFauve.
Husband-and-wife songwriting team Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez were to write the
score no doubt hoping they could recreate the magic and commercial success they captured
with the Oscar-winning Frozen soundtrack.
Originally slated for a 2018 release, Disney announced in April 2017 that they were pushing
Gigantic back to 2020 giving the Wreck-It Ralph sequel the 2018 slot instead.
Apparently, even two extra years of development time weren't enough.
Just six months later, Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios president Ed Catmull told
Variety that Disney was "ending active development" on Gigantic instead focusing on a new and
unspecified project set for Thanksgiving 2020.
King of the Elves
Legendary science fiction author Philip K. Dick's novels and short stories have long
been a favorite of Hollywood studios Blade Runner, A Scanner Darkly, Total Recall, and
Minority Report were all based on his written works.
Disney jumped on the bandwagon in 2008, when they announced that they were planning on
creating an animated feature based on The King of the Elves, a fantasy short story written
by Dick in 1953.
King of the Elves was originally slated for a late 2012 release, but it's unclear exactly
how far production got.
Disney Animation Studios later removed the King of the Elves page from their website,
so it's pretty safe to assume that the movie has been shelved indefinitely.
Newt
Disney revealed a number of their upcoming projects in a 2008 press release, including
the proposed Pixar animated films The Bear and the Bow and Newt.
While The Bear and the Bow eventually found its way to the big screen in 2012 as Brave,
the production of Newt was much more troubled.
Originally planned for a 2011 release, Newt was to tell the tale of the last remaining
male and female blue-footed newts, forced together by hopeful scientists in order to
save their species only to discover that they can't stand each other.
If that plot sounds familiar, that's because it's essentially the storyline found in the
2011 Fox animated feature Rio
Wait... wwww did you actually think we were going to kiss?
no... no no no. We just met!
oh my! I think they need a little help.
After finding out that Fox had beaten them to the box office with the very similar tale,
Disney-Pixar canned their plans for Newt.
In a 2011 interview, John Lasseter, then- the company's Chief Creative Officer, acknowledged
that the parallels between the two films were behind Newt's cancellation.
Where the Wild Things Are
Speaking of John Lasseter, in the '80s when he was just an animator at Disney, he helped
explore the new technology of computer-drawn animation.
At the time, Disney owned the rights to Maurice Sendak's classic children's book Where the
Wild Things Are, and had been considering adapting it.
Lasseter began working on a short CGI featurette designed to be a test of the burgeoning new
computer technology.
At the time, though, executives at Disney weren't interested in using computer technology
unless it could make the production process faster or cheaper.
Disney eventually lost the rights to Sendak's book, and the whole project came to a halt.
Wild Life
You may have heard of George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion, but you're likely more familiar
with some of the popular adaptations of the tale like 1964's My Fair Lady starring Audrey
Hepburn, or the always classy take presented in 1999's She's All That.
"Hey now check out the bobos on superfreak."
Then again, My Fair Lady did have this scene
"Come on Gober, move your bloomin' Arse!"
In the early 2000s, Disney's "Secret Lab" developed their own version of Shaw's tale
an animated feature film called Wild Life.
The details of the proposed plot are sketchy, but the movie was to be a modern interpretation,
in which an elephant named Ella becomes an instant celebrity in the New York City club
circuit.
Legendary Disney artist Hans Bacher worked on the ill-fated project for two years, and
he shared some of the concept and character art for Wild Life on his personal website.
Disney eventually pulled the plug because of story issues and the fact that the dialogue
was peppered with too much adult humor.
Yellow Submarine
In the late 2000s, Disney floated plans to develop a motion-capture remake of Yellow
Submarine, the acclaimed 1968 animated film based on the music of the Beatles.
Robert Zemeckis was supposed to develop the remake, but the film experienced numerous
setbacks along the way.
Disney finally confirmed the project was underway in September 2009, but despite all the hype,
The Yellow Submarine would never resurface.
Although it hasn't been confirmed, it's been suggested that Zemeckis' dedication to the
imperfect motion-capture techniques used in his previous films like A Christmas Carol,
The Polar Express, and Beowulf probably contributed to the sinking of Yellow Submarine.
When Zemeckis' next motion-capture project Mars Needs Moms flopped spectacularly at the
box-office in 2011, Disney cut both Zemeckis and his Yellow Submarine project loose.
The Nightmare Before Christmas 2
After the unexpected success of The Nightmare Before Christmas in 1993, Disney was eager
to capitalize on the film's widespread acclaim.
Originally released under Disney's Touchstone Pictures banner because of the movie's "spooky"
content, Disney later fully embraced The Nightmare Before Christmas re-releasing it in theaters
for several years running and even spending a bundle to digitize the film for a 3D release
in 2006.
But those reissues weren't the only plans Disney had for the film.
According to director Henry Selick, Disney started floating ideas for a possible Nightmare
Before Christmas sequel around 2001.
Selick claimed that studio execs wanted the sequel to be CG instead of the stop-motion
techniques used in the original film.
It seems that Tim Burton himself, who produced and conceived the tale, shut Disney down on
the sequel talk.
In a 2006 interview with MTV, he explained:
"I was always very protective of [Nightmare], not to do sequels or things of that kind…it's
not a mass-market kind of thing, it was important to kind of keep that purity of it."
Tam Lin
After his blockbuster success with The Lion King in 1994 and his equally successful Broadway
musical version of the film, director Roger Allers turned his attention to a new Disney
production.
The Kingdom of The Sun was his pet project.
But after conflicts with Disney over the story and direction of the movie, Allers ended up
making the decision to leave the production which was retooled and released as The Emperor's
New Groove in 2000.
Allers turned his attention to Lilo and Stitch, and began to develop a new story pitch based
on the ballad of Tam Lin, a traditional Celtic folk tale.
Allers developed the pitch, but ultimately the internal politics at Disney Studios during
this era kept Tam Lin from ever being developed.
Allers explained:
"I did it for Roy Disney who was eager for an Irish tale but Michael Eisner, the head
of the company was in conflict with Roy on many matters at the time and when I pitched
it to him, he rejected it because of its Irish-ness […] Michael Eisner, the CEO of the Disney
company and Roy Disney a leading member of the Board of Directors and an animation champion
were engaged in a struggle of whose vision for the company would prevail, with the result
that some pictures became casualties if that struggle."
Although Tam Lin was later picked up by Sony Pictures Animation in 2003, Allers said the
team at Sony couldn't agree on how to approach the movie, and all plans to develop the picture
were scrapped.
The Emperor and the Nightingale
Disney has long turned to the fairytales of Hans Christian Andersen and others to inspire
their animated and live-action films.
One of these tales, The Nightingale, was first floated as a possible Disney adaptation in
the 1940s.
Since then, numerous attempts to get The Nightingale to the big screen have all fallen flat although
Disney did manage to put out a children's book adaptation.
The Emperor and the Nightingale was reworked as a computer-animated project in the spring
of 2003, but less than six months later the project was shelved yet again this time, indefinitely.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit Sequel
Director Robert Zemeckis took his Yellow Submarine remake defeat in stride, and turned his attention
to developing a sequel to Who Framed Roger Rabbit for Disney.
"Remember me, Eddie?"
Zemeckis seemed to have both Disney and original Roger Rabbit star Bob Hoskins on board for
his sequel.
But then Hoskins was forced to retire from acting due to his ill health and sadly passed
away in 2014 which seemed to spell the end for any talk of a Roger Rabbit sequel.
Never one to admit defeat, Zemeckis claimed in 2016 that he had a "terrific" script in
place, saying: "It would be very hard to do but we would do a digital Bob Hoskins."
Before you get too worried about what Robert Zemeckis plans to do to Hoskins' legacy, rest
assured that it's extremely unlikely Disney will ever make this picture and Zemeckis knows
it.
He admitted: "The current corporate Disney culture has no interest in Roger, and they
certainly don't like Jessica at all."
"I'm not bad...I'm just drawn that way."
Sure you're not, Jessica.
You keep telling yourself that.