Kingdom of the Sun as a Live Action Remake?

[MrXemnas1992]

Disney's been on a trend of remaking all their animated movies into live action blockbusters, but what if one of them could be used instead to finally bring to life a scrapped movie?

Long story short, Emperor's New Groove was originally planned to be a Prince and the Pauper-inspired epic called "Kingdom of the Sun" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYFbgfso_Wo but was scrapped and retooled into the screwball comedy we got instead, all documented in a rare documentary known as the "Sweatbox"

...if disney's already looking for more movies to make live action, seems like a perfect way to revive the concept.

what do y'all think?

[Sotiris]

I think it's a great idea, but there's little to no chance of that happening. Disney sees the remakes as a way of capitalizing on nostalgia and IP recognition. They're not going to make a remake based on a previous iteration of one of their films. It's more plausible they'll remake The Emperor's New Groove since it's developed a cult following rather than taking a risk by resurrecting Kingdom of the Sun.

[blackcauldron85]

Yes please! I mean, if they can make the story work. I assume they'd need to change character names. Would Disney need Sting's approval to use the songs for another project besides TENG?

It's a pipedream, but I like your idea!

[DisneyFan09]

Funny enough, I´ve seen pleas and petitions about it on YouTube. It would´ve been nice if Disney actually did it, but I highly doubt it. It would´ve been better they completed the animated version, though.

[JeanGreyForever]

I would have preferred this as a Disney film over TENG anyday even if millions of Internet fans would kill me on the spot for saying this. I don't expect this to become a live-action film but I certainly wouldn't be against it.

[estefan]

I would also be curious to see a live-action take of "Kingdom of the Sun." The original idea had a lot of promise and although I love "The Emperor's New Groove", I will always be curious about what could have been.

After Warner Bros announced they would be releasing the Snyder Cut of "Justice League" on HBO Max, I also wondered if Disney+ would do something similar by putting together the completed story reels and animation of earlier versions of movies, including "Kingdom of the Sun." I think that would be such a treat for animation fans. I really liked that Disney included a large chunk of Richard Purdum's "Beauty and the Beast" on the Blu-Ray. It provides another peek at the development of their animated films.

[JeanGreyForever]

I would also be curious to see a live-action take of "Kingdom of the Sun." The original idea had a lot of promise and although I love "The Emperor's New Groove", I will always be curious about what could have been.

After Warner Bros announced they would be releasing the Snyder Cut of "Justice League" on HBO Max, I also wondered if Disney+ would do something similar by putting together the completed story reels and animation of earlier versions of movies, including "Kingdom of the Sun." I think that would be such a treat for animation fans. I really liked that Disney included a large chunk of Richard Purdum's "Beauty and the Beast" on the Blu-Ray. It provides another peek at the development of their animated films.

Disney rarely ever includes features of earlier versions of their films, BATB and Toy Story aside. There's nothing about Glen Keane's Rapunzel in Tangled or American Dog in Bolt. TENG's DVD pretended as if Kingdom of the Sun never existed at all. Going by how Disney had such a bad experience with Sting while working on KOTS, plus the release of The Sweatbox, which Disney has always tried to hide away, I can't see them ever releasing anything official from the KOTS production.

I think concept art like this shows though that KOTS could easily translate to live-action, moreso than TENG ever could.

[estefan]

There's nothing about Glen Keane's Rapunzel in Tangled or American Dog in Bolt.

The lack of acknowledgement of "American Dog" has always disappointed me. Chris Sanders didn't even get a mention in the credits for "Bolt", not even a special thanks.

Having seen "The Sweatbox", I don't find the revelations of "The Emperor's New Groove"'s production that damaging to Disney or its executives. Schneider and Schumacher's notes aren't that unreasonable and if anything, it makes one appreciate the finished film and the Disney artists all the more for how they were able to create something so good on a tight schedule. It's silly that Disney has kept it locked up. If it's because of Sting's use of profanity, that's easy to clean up. I hope enough time has passed and they decide it's okay to add to Disney+.

[thedisneyspirit]

Oh man, the racial discourse about this film is gonna be rich. Between Hollywood wanting to whitewash the cast to get "more famous actors" in the role, to mainstream Disney fans complaining about no recognizable talent in the cast, to Disney putting any random Latinos in the role without even asking for Andean actors for authenticity (and white wokes celebrating this- I can already imagine people fancasting Lin Manuel Miranda as Kuzco), to putting in other races that shouldn't have been in the setting for hundreds of years later, to bastardizing the culture and Disney fans arguing about "authentic representation" or not (when the OG film is barely authentic)...

...

[JeanGreyForever]

This reminds me of how when TENG was released, Disney felt it would do better in LA if they released a Spanish version of the film. Which just felt so tone-deaf because the setting of the film was way before the Spanish even arrived into the New World, let alone Peru. It seemed like an erasure of Peruvians and their culture as if they didn't exist before the Spaniards. That mentality certainly explains why projects like Elena of Avalor were created or why TENG beat out KOTS when it came to Latin "representation."

[thedisneyspirit]

I heard the reason why movies starring pre-Columbian Hispanic cultures like TENG or EL Dorado bomb because most Western audiences don't find the setting appealing or exotic. I dunno if true but it could explain a lot.

[JeanGreyForever]

And the sad thing is that those are the only two films I can think of in a setting like that so we can't even know for sure if it was the setting that wasn't appealing to audiences or something else entirely. Ironic that they don't find it exotic though because they had no problem finding it that way when they came to the New World and wiped the original inhabitants out.