List of abandoned projects

[disneyprincess11]

Too late

[Sotiris]

I knew about Little Mermaid's Island, but I didn't know there were two whole episodes produced. Were there anymore, or was that it?

Just those two were produced. You can learn more about the cancelled show, here and here.

Too late.

I've found the videos again but because Disney might be monitoring this forum (I don't think it's a coincidence that they had the videos deleted in a matter of hours since I posted them here when they were up for weeks and they didn't notice), I'm not going to post the new ones here. Let me know if any of you wants them and I'll PM you the links.

[Sotiris]

Disney was planning on making animated TV shows based on Dick Tracy and The Rocketeer.

Sources said Disney also may be looking to develop additional feature properties – including “Dick Tracy” and the upcoming summer release “The Rocketeer” – as Saturday-morning series. Disney TV Animation exec v.p. Gary Krisel said while both would be extremely viable, there were no immediate plans along those lines and definitely none for next fall.

Source: http://variety.com/1991/tv/features/dis ... -99125657/

Krisel said Disney was being careful about announcing when a series might appear because a number of animated series had been plagued by the inability to meet production deadlines because of increased demand for the services of animation facilities in the Far East. It was noted that Disney and Warner Brothers would be producing more that 500 half hours of animation over the next three years.

Source: http://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/an ... dotes-316/

[estefan]

I'm guessing The Rocketeer animated series didn't happen, because of the movie's disappointing box-office performance. And in the case of Dick Tracy, Warren Beatty owned all of the screen rights to the property (and still does, in fact) and likely blocked an animated series from being made. He has been stubbornly holding onto the possibility of making a sequel forever and he even blocked a live-action television series from being made a while back.

[Sotiris]

DisneyToon Studios at one point had developed an original feature about ghosts.

Art by Brooks Campbell.

[unprincess]

^neat! that would have been so awesome!

[blackcauldron85]

Ahhh!!! Ooh, that seems like it would've been fun!! (& maybe they could've had some kind of cross promotion w/ The Haunted Mansion) (I wonder if anything, whether story ideas, designs, jokes, anything, from A Few Good Ghosts was being used to get ideas from for this movie...) I wonder what time period this was being created during. Awesome find, Sotiris!!!

[blackcauldron85]

Disney had been developing The Little Broomstick in the '80s, and now it's coming out via another studio, called Mary and the Witch's Flower.
http://jimhillmedia.com/editor_in_chief ... lower.aspx

[JeanGreyForever]

Thanks for posting. I'd never heard of this one. Disney had some interesting projects in the 80s like this and Mistress Masham's Repose.

[Rumpelstiltskin]

I don't know if it has been mentioned already, but found this:


http://theweek.com/articles/462823/8-di ... dnt-happen

8 Disney Sequels That Didn't Happen


1. Dumbo II

As it so happens, Dumbo is John Lasseter’s favorite movie of all time. This, perhaps, is the reason that he put the kibosh on its proposed sequel when he was named Chief Creative Officer of Walt Disney Animation Studios in 2006. The sequel was so far along that a “behind the scenes” trailer was actually released (not embeddable—sorry!). The premise: Dumbo and his circus buddies have to figure their way out of the big city after the circus train accidentally leaves them there.

2. Pinocchio II

We can thank Lasseter for this cancellation as well. Screenwriter Robert Reece was responsible for the plot to this sequel, but all he has divulged about the ill-fated project was that it was “a story that leads Pinocchio to question why life appears unfair sometimes.”

3. The Aristocats II

Another Reece-written project, The Aristocats II would have been about the kittens’ adventures on a cruise ship with a jewel thief. The storyboard artist on the film described it as “Murder on the Orient Express without the murder.” Or the Orient Express, I suppose.

4. Hercules II

Was Hercules a big enough hit to have a sequel? I’d tell you “no,” but hey, I’m no Disney exec. The proposed part two would have had Hercules and Megara living in Athens with their daughter, Hebe. When Hercules’ old friend Helen is kidnapped by Paris of Troy, Herc rallies the Greek army to save her. Though this sequel was scrapped, a direct-to-video midquel called Zero to Hero came out in 1998.

5. Who Discovered Roger Rabbit/Roger Rabbit Two: The Toon Platoon

This is the one item on the list that I’d be intrigued to see hit the silver screen. This prequel was originally based around Roger’s search for his parents and Jessica being kidnapped to serve as a Tokyo Rose-type character during WWII. Rewrites in the late ‘90s changed the plot to be about Roger’s rise to stardom. By this point, however, Steven Spielberg excused himself from the project. This, combined with the skyrocketing budget (and a couple of other factors), prompted Disney to put the poor bunny back on the shelf. But, as any Roger Rabbit fan knows, don’t count him out just yet. As recently as October 2012, Robert Zemeckis said that a script has been finished and they were just waiting “for all of the executive changes to settle down there.”

6. Bambi’s Children

Ever wonder what happened to Bambi after he grew up? He and Faline became the parents to twins Geno and Gurri, of course. Disney would have loved to tell you all about it back in 1944, when they were considering making a movie out of the book sequel.

Just because this particular followup got nixed doesn’t mean Disney didn’t plow ahead with another questionable Bambi sequel anyway: Bambi II, a “midquel,” was released in 2006 and occurs right in the middle of the events of the original Bambi. Basically, the young deer and his bevy of forest friends learn how to be brave and his dad acts like a jerk.

7. The Nightmare Before Christmas prequel/sequel

The scuttlebutt a few years ago—so the facts here are a little squishy—is that a second NBC film was in the works. “There are a lot of other great holidays for Jack Skellington to take over,” director Henry Selick said. But Tim Burton seems to have stopped that one in its tracks.

"I was always very protective of it, not to do sequels or things of that kind. You know, 'Jack visits Thanksgiving World' or other kinds of things, just because I felt the movie had a purity to it and the people that like it,” Burton said. “I try to respect people and keep the purity of the project as much as possible."

8. Treasure Planet II

Like Hercules, I was under the impression that Treasure Planet wasn’t really a big hit. In fact, I believe it was a colossal financial failure. So it’s really no surprise that plans for the sequel were downgraded to “development hell” status indefinitely.

[Semaj]

I would have hated Disney if they ever made a Pinocchio sequel.

[Kyle]

Say what you will about Lasseter (especially in light of recent events), one of the best things he did was nix a lot of those, for good reason.

[thedisneyspirit]

^Only to give us the same thing years later in the form of the remakes.

[bruno_wbt]

^Only to give us the same thing years later in the form of the remakes.

And tons of unnecessary Pixar sequels...

[JeanGreyForever]

Wasn't he also the one who wanted to recreate some of the old Disney classics in CGI before he got a lot of flack for that?

[Rumpelstiltskin]

There were rumors that Eisner wanted to remake all the classics in CGI. (these days they are being remade as live-action). Found a couple of old threads in here:

http://www.dvdizzy.com/forum/viewtopic. ... +cgi#p1960

http://www.dvdizzy.com/forum/viewtopic. ... &view=next

The old link doesn't even work at Wayback Machine, but someone copied the article here:

https://forums.wdwmagic.com/threads/eis ... cle.23900/

Disney’s last four animated films combined made less than half of what Pixar’s did ($357 million vs. $856 million). With Steve Jobs threatening to walk, Disney is readying its own fare like “Elgin’s People,” which features a computer-generated rag doll voiced by Dolly Parton, animated in three dimensions (how else?). Meanwhile, Eisner wants to extend the lives of Disney’s older characters by reanimating some classics for a new look. Imagine a 3-D Peter Pan soaring over a digitized London.

[D82]

^Only to give us the same thing years later in the form of the remakes.

Well, to be fair, he didn't have anything to do with the live-action remakes as he didn't oversee that division of the company.

[Disney's Divinity]

I know people on this forum have argued over whether or not the Live-Action remakes are an attempt to “replace” the animated films, but I’ve never believed there’s any possibility of that happening. But I think that argument would definitely have applied if they’d started making 3D remakes of old classics.

[Disney Duster]

The live-action remakes aren't the sequels. At least the remakes are seen as alternate imaginings on their own.

[Rumpelstiltskin]

Some info about the Chanticleer and the Fox: A Chaucerian Tale project:

http://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/in ... arc-davis/

Marc Davis: It had been around the studio for a long time and Ken Anderson and I thought we could develop it as the next animated feature after 101 Dalmatians. At the time, Walt was thinking about not doing any more animated features and we felt if we had this thing done up, it might get him excited and change his mind. I think the concept art is some of the best work I did at the studio.

We had all the artwork up on the walls and we went through this presentation and they were all quiet and some bookkeeper says, “You can’t make a good character out of a chicken.” And that’s all it took to kill us and it is nonsense. But because this idiot said that, other people started saying it as well.

You can make a good character out of a push pin if you want but it was too late. We thought this had tremendous possibilities. We could have brought this off with interesting characters.

Other claims it was Disney who decided to go for The Jungle Book instead:

http://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/re ... animation/

Disney approved the idea, and for about six months Chanticleer was going to become an animated feature, with Reynard the fox as the manager of a dishonest traveling carnival. Then Disney confronted the fact that his theme park development in Florida was so expensive that he would have to cut his animation production expenses sharply. His studio had two features in full production, The Jungle Book and Chanticleer, but one would have to go. Disney chose to continue The Jungle Book. Reportedly some of the animal character designs, especially of Reynard, were used in the 1973 Disney funny-animal feature Robin Hood.