Would Disney animation adapt a trilogy

[willard]

Disney nowadays has no problem making sequels but would they adapt a book trilogy or would that be too risky? Is adapting book trilogies risker for animation than live action?

[blackcauldron85]

My first thought goes to Mort; Disney didn't want to purchase the whole series, which was a requirement. And Disney didn't finish Narnia past 2 films (not animated beyond some characters obviously but still an unfinished book series).

So I can't foresee Disney anytime soon wanting to risk making book 1 of a series... Of course I could be wrong!

[willard]

Was it required that they adapt the whole series? Why didn't they just adapt Mort by itself anyway?

[blackcauldron85]

Terry Pratchett required that the rights to the whole series be purchased:

Unfortunately, the Discworld rights were sold as a package and Disney was unwilling to option the full franchise, so it was cancelled.

https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Mort

[willard]

Apparently the opposite is true.

Things got surprisingly far—some absolutely exquisite concept art was developed by artist Claire Keane (it’s the black and white pictures you can find on her website here), and an art department was set up, which even distributed a Christmas card featuring Death dressed as Father Christmas, as depicted in Pratchett’s novel Hogfather. It seemed too good to be true. And it was. There were two snags. The first was that the rights to Mort, acquired back in 1996, still resided with Paul Bamborough and his new company, Camel Productions, though Disney probably had enough money to sort that out. More worrying for Pratchett was a revelation during a meeting in New York that, should he give Mort to the House of Mouse, they would have automatic rights to make further films using all of the characters and locations within it, including adapting all of the books that they appeared in.

Since the main character of Mort is Death himself, who cameos or stars in almost every Discworld novel, numbering some 39 books by that point, plus short stories and spinoffs, this was something of a problem. It is, apparently, the only time one particular Disney lawyer ever found himself being literally screamed at by a prospective collaborator. The deal fell apart, right there in the meeting. Mort, probably the most adaptable of Pratchett’s books, remains unfilmed.

https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/unmade ... nt-happen/

[blackcauldron85]

Now that you post that, I do remember reading that when it came out (I actually posted about it: viewtopic.php?t=27438&hilit=Mort&start=420). I still think, and that article illustrates it, that Disney will stay away from adapting series of books, for the time being... unless they can from the get-go get a good deal from the author or publisher, or I guess it might legally be easier to use public domain material).