List of abandoned projects

[robster16]

You can find some of the artwork from the new book on Twitter already. Just do a search for the book title and take a look!

[Disney's Divinity]

It’s funny how often nightingales or even swans appear in fairy tales, but Disney has never made an animated film featuring either one, have they?

[blackcauldron85]

^ Nope...There was The Emperor and the Nightingale, which was turned into a book with the concept art, and Swan Lake, and The Swan of Tuonela for Fantasia, but none came to be...

[Sotiris]

^ Nope...There was The Emperor and the Nightingale, which was turned into a book with the concept art, and Swan Lake, and The Swan of Tuonela for Fantasia, but none came to be...

Aside from The Emperor's Nightingale starring Mickey Mouse, there was going to be another Nightingale adaptation that was set in India. There was also The Trumpet of the Swan which was pitched by Ron Clements.

[blackcauldron85]

Whoa, good memory!! Those did not cross my brain and I need to do some research! <3

[Sotiris]

There was going to be an animated Flubber series based on the 1997 film.


Source: https://www.coroflot.com/thomascain/Bac ... gPublicity

[Sotiris]

Info on the cancelled Mistress Masham's Repose.

Way back toward the end of production of "The Black Cauldron" there were a few new animated projects in development at Disney. One of them was "Mistress Masham's Repose", based on a 1946 book by T.H.White (the guy who also wrote "The Sword in the Stone"). I forget now how long I worked in pre-production on the project, but I did enjoy doing this early character development. I even sent copies to Milt Kahl for possible input. He said he liked them OK as far as early concept art goes, but he feared that the studio would probably reuse some of the mice business from "Cinderella" for situations with the Lilliputians. He obviously still felt burnt because of all the reused animation during the 1960ies and 70ies. As far as style goes, I had Ronald Searle and Milt Kahl in my head, and I think you can tell, for better or for worse.

Source: http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2012/02 ... epose.html

Floyd Norman: Andreas, do you remember the late Disney artist, Roy Morita? He was also doing development work on this film project. Roy's office was on the third floor of the Animation Building. I used to visit him a good deal while he was working on this film.

Andreas Deja: I do remember Roy Morita. At that time I had no idea about his rich animation career.

Susan Morita: My father, Roy Morita, was the Disney artist Floyd referred to working on this project as well, right before he passed away in 1984. He was assigned to develop this project and worked on storyboards and character sketches the last few years before his death. He pitched the project it before the current CEO of the time (Ron Miller, I believe.) It was not good timing and the idea was rejected.for this project. They are detailed and amazing sketches which bring the story to life, as are the sketches that you have shared on this website. How he worked on this project, hoping it would be made into an animated movie. Thank you, Floyd, for remembering him and that he had a part in the project. I have long wondered if his storyboards, sketches and notes are in some vault at the Disney studios, gathering dust.

Source: http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2012/02 ... epose.html

The studio is also at work on a Sherlock Holmes mystery played out by some mice who live in an apartment below the famous detective. This $13 million movie, ''Basil of Baker Street,'' will follow ''The Black Cauldron'' into theaters in 1987. A year and a half later, there will be another animated feature. Two top candidates are a version of ''The Three Musketeers'' starring Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy and Jose Carioca, and T. H. White's ''Mistress Masham's Repose.''

Source: https://www.newspapers.com/clip/8981735 ... llinoisan/

It is a wonderful story and once was set to become a film itself. Walt Disney liked the idea, possibly because White had written 'The Sword in the Stone', the novel about the boyhood of King Arthur which his company made into a successful animated film in 1963. But after Disney died in 1966 the project was shelved.

Source: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/ma ... ms-repose/


From a 1984 internal memo.

Because of the budget limitation $10-12 million dollars for future animated features, Mistress Masham's Repose must be shelved for the present time. I continue to believe that it would make a financially successful picture, but it would cost at least $20 million.

Source: https://comics.ha.com/itm/animation-art ... 07-97235.s


From the book Walt's People: Volume 11.

When The Black Cauldron was winding down, I began to work on another picture called Mistress Masham's Repose. It was based on a British book [by T.H. White]. It was about a little girl who was an orphan girl and lived on a big English estate that belonged to her family. Her aunt and her uncle were her cruel guardians. There was a little lake on the estate that had an island in the middle of it. On the island were the same little people from Gulliver's Travels. They had set up a little civilization on this island in the middle of the lake, and the only one who knew about it was this little girl. I don't remember her name. Somewhere along this timeline, Michael Eisner took over at Disney and Ron Miller was deposed. Roy E. Disney came back to work in Animation. Jeffrey Katzenberg was working directly under Eisner. Katzenberg didn't like Mistress Masham's Repose. Roy liked it and he kept renewing options on it.

[Disney's Divinity]

I've never read Mistress Masham's Repose. Reading the excerpts you posted above, I was stumped for a bit by "Lilliputians" because I thought that was something from Gulliver's Travels--apparently those characters in White's novel were directly based on those in Swift's novel, going by Wikipedia (sketchy source as it is). I looked it up before I even finished got to the end of your post, where that was made obvious. The tiny blurb of what the book is about honestly made me envision a story similar to The Tom and Jerry Movie. As far as a fat governess and a greedy male guardian trying to keep a little girl "poor and abandoned" out of their own self-interest. I'm hearing Tony Jay's and Charlotte Rae's voices already.

[Rumpelstiltskin]

It appears that T.H.White was one of the early writers who experimented with a shared universe, referring to the work of others and using the same races. It had probably already been done with characters and creatures from various mythologies, but this is a specific author.

I wouldn't mind seeing the story as a future Disney movie, but then the studio would probably have to choose between Mistress Masham's Repose or Gigantic, since they both deal with a character meeting a people where the size difference is enormous.

[blackcauldron85]

Way back toward the end of production of "The Black Cauldron" there were a few new animated projects in development at Disney. One of them was "Mistress Masham's Repose", based on a 1946 book by T.H.White (the guy who also wrote "The Sword in the Stone"). I forget now how long I worked in pre-production on the project, but I did enjoy doing this early character development. I even sent copies to Milt Kahl for possible input. He said he liked them OK as far as early concept art goes, but he feared that the studio would probably reuse some of the mice business from "Cinderella" for situations with the Lilliputians. He obviously still felt burnt because of all the reused animation during the 1960ies and 70ies. As far as style goes, I had Ronald Searle and Milt Kahl in my head, and I think you can tell, for better or for worse.

Source: http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2012/02 ... epose.html

I don't have time to go down the rabbit hole right now, but in the comments section:

Unknown February 10, 2012 at 9:41 AM
This reminds me that one of the other projects they were developing at the same time was Piers Anthony's Ogre, Ogre (which I had suggested to Rick). Did you do any of the development on that one? I can't recall offhand.
If they'd gone ahead with that one they would have caused DW to look at Shrek since both featured an Ogre love story and had a very tongue in cheek take on fairy tales

Andreas Deja February 14, 2012 at 12:44 PM
I didn't work on the Ogre project, Steve.
But I did spend some time on "Dufus". Remember that one?

Unknown February 14, 2012 at 1:29 PM
God yes! Doofus the police dog....named after Eisner's dog. That was the direction he saw for animation ...between that and Oliver things looked grim

[Sotiris]

I couldn't find anything on "Orge, Ogre". Interestingly, Disney had optioned another book by the same author called "On a Pale Horse" in 2003 and was looking to adapt it as a live-action feature with Jamie Foxx as the lead. For "Dufus", check this post.

[blackcauldron85]

^Thanks! Not much info on Dufus, but I feel like maybe some of the art is in the new They Drew As They Pleased book...it's in the other room but if I remember I'll go through it and see. Interesting that besides Mort, Disney was going to use Death (an angel of Death anyway) for On a Pale Horse, but doesn't appear that that would've been animated, or maybe it even would've been Touchstone...

[Rumpelstiltskin]

I don't know if it has been posted yet, but according to Floyd Norman, Disney planned to release a series of animated "B-movies" between the animated "A-movies":

http://jimhillmedia.com/columnists1/b/f ... movie.aspx

Back in the 1960s, our morning was interrupted by a special meeting. It was held in a small conference room just off A-Wing in Disney's animation building. I honestly don't recall everyone in the meeting. But I do know that production boss Ken Peterson and Andy Engman were present.

Why this special meeting? Well, Disney's animation department was still recovering from the "failure" of "Sleeping Beauty" at the box office. Disney Studios, and Walt Disney in particular, began to explore the idea of producing less expensive films. Hardly a new idea, Hollywood studios had their A-list productions, along with other shows that became known as "B" movies. These were films produced at a lower cost and provided a training ground for up & coming actors and directors. Live-action produced "B" movies, why not animation?

By the arrival of the '60s, Disney movies were usually considered top tier motion pictures with large staffs and a considerable budget. However, the Old Maestro began rethinking this idea. There were also projects that did not necessarily require all the resources of Disney Studios, and Ken Peterson actually had a list of stories Walt Disney considered exploring as low budget features.

You're probably wondering what stories were on Walt's list back in the 1960s, right? What were the movies that would compliment the big budgeted A-list feature films at Disney? Well, I wish I had taken better notes, because I can't remember all the stories Ken put on the table as possible feature films. However, I can tell you that one story was based on the Native American, "Hiawatha." This had been an idea Walt Disney had been thinking about for years. He probably intended to make the film back in the 1940s before the advent of World War II suddenly changed things. Another story on the table was a children's novel by Margery Sharp entitled, "The Rescuers."

You might be wondering what was the purpose of this morning meeting at the Disney studio. I'm only speculating, but I think the studio wanted to put to rest rumors of an animation department shut down. Clearly, Walt Disney still had stories to tell whether those stories proved to be big or small. I can tell you that after the disastrous "Sleeping Beauty" layoffs, this good news was extremely encouraging.

Walt tried to make a feature based on Hiawatha back in the 40s, but I wasn't aware he also tried to do it in the 60s. I don't know the story about Hiawatha, yet considering that the topic is a rather sensitive one these days, I doubt it will ever be made.

And it's hard to disagree with Floyd Norman when he says "I wish I had taken better notes, because I can't remember all the stories Ken put on the table as possible feature films".

Sadly Walt changed his mind, and the movies were never made, except one, which was also the first one on his list:

The first "B" movie was underway. Writer/artist Bill Berg began developing "The Rescuers" as a feature film. Unlike most features that spend years in development, Bill quickly had his boards completed, and ready to show to Walt Disney.

I was in A-Wing on the day of the big meeting.
I moved toward the story room just in time to see the Old Maestro himself walk past me and down the hallway. The look on Walt's face, and his overall attitude told me all I needed to know.

A decade later, and someone pulled out Walt's Rescuers project again and it finally saw the light of day (unlike the one about the Gibraltar monkeys during WW2).

As we know, The Artistocats was the last script Walt greenlighted. It was based on what would have been a live action TV-movie.

Which is why Robin Hood is credited as being the first animated feature "the old maestro", as Floyd Normal calls him, was not personally involved in. But he was. Years earlier the studio had tried to make a movie based on Reynard the Fox, which never happened. When the idea of Robin Hood came up, someone thought of using the animal designs and many of the ideas from Reynard and add them in the movie. Meaning he was at least indirectly involved.

He was still alive when two of the three Winnie the Pooh shorts were produced. If he had been tinkering with the third short I can't say (but either way, the third is a result of the two previous ones).

Then there is The Rescuers, which Walt once intended as a B-movie.

So it seems that The Fox and the Hound is probably the first Disney feature without any of Walt's involvement. Which is fitting, considering it is also the first feature made by the new generation of Disney artists fresh from CalArts.

[Disney's Divinity]

And The Rescuers did end up coming together in the end as B-level movie after all.

[DisneyBluLife]

The storyboards from the Hiawatha movie that Walt wanted to make can be found on the Pocahontas Blu-ray.

[Sotiris]

There was going to be an animated Winnie the Pooh show where Winnie was going to be voiced by Bobby Moynihan.

When Bobby Moynihan brought this up, it was in response to a question about working with Jim Cummings on Star Wars: Resistance. While it never made headlines, it appears that Disney at one point attempted another TV series based on the characters from the Hundred Acre Woods that would’ve been somewhat of a reboot. “I once got cast as the new Winnie the Pooh and I was terrified because Jim Cummings is a genius,” Moynihan explained. “It got canceled before it came out and I was never so happy in my life.” We can only guess as to what the series would’ve been like as this is the first we’ve heard of it.

Source: https://www.laughingplace.com/w/article ... ter-hours/

[disneyprincess11]

[Disney's Divinity]

I liked him a lot on SNL, but find his voice (all the children's voices really) super annoying on the new version of DuckTales. So I'm glad this didn't happen.

[estefan]

Maybe it's because of his previous experience voicing an animated bear, but I can kind of picture Moynihan as Winnie the Pooh. "We Bare Bears" proves he can voice someone who is kind and gentle.

[Sotiris]

There was going to be a 2D-animated Tron TV series in 2005. Incidentally, a live-action Tron series was also shelved.

2005. After Robot Monkey ended, Disney Television Animation asked me if I wanted to develop Power Rangers or TRON as a TV series. My Tron pitch went well but ultimately it wouldn’t work out. My initial idea was a reimagining of an original pitch I had called POWERCADE about 2 kids who inherit electrical powers and a strange energy creature named GLITCH.

Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/CFxem_-JN9V/


Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/CFxem_-JN9V/


Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/CFxem_-JN9V/


Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/CFxem_-JN9V/