DVDizzy Forum

milojthatch wrote: 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?

disneyprincess11 wrote:Too late.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.