04-03-2025
These Animated Movies Got Cancelled, And I'm Upset
16. Beauty and the Beast (Don Bluth's Version)
Don Bluth planned to do an animated adaptation of Beauty and the Beast in 1984. Concept artwork was completed, but upon discovering that Disney had plans for their own adaptation, the project was canceled by Columbia Pictures.
15. Where the Wild Things Are
Disney / Via
Disney originally owned the film rights for Where the Wild Things Are as far back as the 1980s, but they were never used. A test sequence was animated. The backgrounds were going to be CGI and the characters were going to be traditional animated. However, due to the fact it was going to be too expensive, and the difficulty in expanding the 40-page book into a feature film, the film was dropped. A film adaptation of the book was eventually released in 2009.
14. East of the Sun and West of the Moon
East of the Sun and West of the Moon was a planned film of Don Bluth. It was an adaptation of the Norwegian fairy tale of the same name. This film was going originally to be produced after The Secret of NIMH, but was cancelled by Paramount Pictures after Don Bluth Productions become Sullivan Bluth Studios.
13. Fraidy Cat
Disney / Via
Fraidy Cat began production in 2004, and was to have been a satire of Alfred Hitchcock's film noirs. The initial storyreel was presented in May of that year and although many of the animators were impressed with it, David Stainton would not agree to release the movie. This was because he did not think that it would be able to be marketed to a general audience, on account of average people, especially children were not well-versed in Hitchcock's films.
12. Chanticleer
Disney has tried many times to adapt Edmond Rostand's play Chantecler. They first put it into production in the 1940s, but was shelved due to World War II. Then it was revived in the 1960s as was going to be relevant of popular Broadway musicals, but it was scrapped again due to animators having more interest in working on The Sword in the Stone. Then, in 1981, Mel Shaw proposed a story re-write. This would've depicted Chanticleer as "the most macho chicken in all of France". This was quickly rejected by the heads of the studio for the same reasons it had been in the past. Though the film was cancelled, its character designs later inspired the 1973 Disney animated film Robin Hood, and the story itself was later turned into the movie Rock-a-Doodle, directed by ex-Disney animator Don Bluth.
11. Wild Life
Disney / Via
Wild Life began production in 1999. The directors were hoping to create something that would really "knock the socks off the competition." They wanted Wild Life to have a mature edge and wrote some adult-oriented jokes; however, the people working on the movie often worried that Disney would not want to release the film. This constant fear was realized when Roy Disney, then vice chairman of the board, viewed the presentation reel in the fall of 1999 and stated that he was "appalled" at the mature humor (particularly one joke where two gay characters are about to enter the sewers and one remarked "have you ever been down a manhole before?") and ordered the film to be shut down.
10. B.O.O.: Bureau of Otherworldly Operations
B.O.O.: Bureau of Otherworldly Operations was about ghosts Jackson and Watts, who join the Bureau to protect humans from evil ghosts. They uncover a plot by the agency's 'Most Wanted Haunter' to destroy the Bureau with his ghost army. While the film was initially set to be released on June 5th, 2015, DreamWorks decided to move the release date seven months back to November 2014 in order to avoid competition with Pixar's Inside Out, before ultimately removing it from the release schedule entirely in order to find a different release date. While the film was speculated to have been pushed back to a 2016 release date, it was ultimately never added back into Dreamworks' release schedule. While there has been no official announcement on the status of the film, the lack of information on it since 2015 strongly indicates that the film was quietly cancelled and will almost certainly never see the light of day.
9. Monkeys of Mumbai
DreamWorks Animation / Via
In January 2011, it was announced that DreamWorks was fast-tracking a Bollywood-styled musical adaptation of The Ramayana, but told through the point of view of its monkeys. It would have follow two common monkeys who become unlikely heroes in a last ditch effort to stop an ancient, thought-to-be-mythical demon from conquering the world. Stephen Schwartz and A. R. Rahman were attached to compose the songs and score. However, in December 2017, director Kevin Lima revealed that DreamWorks quietly cancelled the film. He had also attempted to bring the movie to other studios to see if they would like to fund it. He hit all the major animation studios, but the price tag of the movie scared all them away.
8. Tusker
Tusker was announced in December 1998, with Jeffery Katzenberg describing the movie as an action-comedy: "It is very much an homage to the classic World War II films such as The Dirty Dozen or The Guns of Navarone, in which a band of screw-ups have to go on an impossible mission in order to save the rest of the herd." In July 2001, it was announced unofficially that the movie, which was originally set for December 2002, has been postponed to 2003, after the release of Shrek 2. It was confirmed in March 2002 that Jodie Foster had begun work on the animated movie, which was at the time "still in its early stages" and had no release date scheduled. In August 2008, it was reported that DreamWorks Animation's former co-head of production Cecil Kramer, who shepherded Tusker at the studio for six years, brought the project to Hong Kong and Los Angeles-based animation company Imagi Animation Studios. An early 2011 release was scheduled that same month, but following the box office failure of Imagi's Astro Boy, Tusker was again cancelled February 5, 2010 as the animation studio shut down.
7. Spooky Jack
DreamWorks Animation / Via
DreamWorks announced an original feature called Spooky Jack, with a planned release date of September 17, 2021. Jason Blum would served as executive producer, and would've been a co-production with Blumhouse Productions. The premise would've been about three siblings who moved into an eerie new home and discover that all the creatures we've been told that don't exist actually do exist. Spooky Jack was removed from the schedule in 2019, with its original release date replaced by The Bad Guys.
6. Tortoise vs. Hare
In October 1999, Aardman announced they were developing a film adaptation of the Aesop fable, The Tortoise and the Hare, with DreamWorks. In July 2001, it was announced that they had postponed production on the film as they continued to rework the script. The film was put off to a complete halt later that month. No further updates were given until June 2012, a source told Ain't It Cool News, "It's meltdown time. Serious script issues, an unholy mess of a film, it's amazing that it got as far as it did. The alarm bells should have started ringing months ago when various voice talent came and went, and intricate sets were being built and promptly trashed without being filmed. What a waste!"
5. Newt
Disney/Pixar / Via
Newt focuses on a pair of blue-footed newts, Newt and Brooke, the last remaining male and female of their kind on the planet forced together by science to save the species, and the can't stand each other. At the April 2010 announcement, Disney/Pixar didn't provide an updated release date for Newt. Additionally, the film was removed from the official Disney A to Z Encyclopedia supplement by chief archivist Dave Smith. An unsigned message received from Smith's email address stated "The film has been cancelled". This message, along with comments from other industry insiders, led to the speculation that the film had indeed been cancelled. In March 2014, Ed Catmull revealed that before being cancelled, Newt had been turned over to Pete Docter: "Newt was another unlikely idea that wasn't working. When we gave it to somebody new [Pete Docter] he said, "I'll do it, but I have another idea altogether, which I think is better." And we thought it was better too [Docter's concept was the basis of Inside Out, which he directed for a 2015 release]. That was the reason we didn't continue with Newt."
4. A Few Good Ghosts/My Peoples
Disney / Via
My Peoples, also known as A Few Good Ghosts, was a film developed in the late 1990s by Barry Cook, co-director of Mulan. Despite the fact that he even went as far as to hire voice actors, as well as musicians to score the film, it was scrapped in favor of Chicken Little in 2005
3. Larrikins
DreamWorks Animation / Via
Larrikins focused on Perry, an Australian bilby, who gets kicked out of the sheltered life of his family burrow, and ventures out into the Australian outback. According to most sources, the film itself just wasn't working out creatively and technically wasn't what test audiences thought it would be; eventually they thought the film wasn't matching with their 'creative differences.' On March 5, 2020, Tim Minchin opened up about the true reason behind the film's cancellation while chatting to Richard Herring on his podcast; stating that after Universal acquired DreamWorks Animation they cancelled the film and used it as a write-off on their taxes since they had no faith in it performing as well as their more established Intellectual Properties. Despise its cancellation, DreamWorks released the short film Bilby which features characters from the cancelled film.
2. Gigantic
Disney / Via
Gigantic was a film that was loosely based on the tale of Jack and the Beanstalk. It was revealed during the 2015 D23 and was initially scheduled to be the 59th animated feature in the Disney Animated Canon, following the release of Frozen 2 in November 2019. According to Disney and Pixar Animation President Ed Catmull, the project was cancelled due to "creative differences." On October 10, 2017, Disney announced that the project has been cancelled and was replaced with Raya and the Last Dragon.
1. Me and My Shadow
DreamWorks Animation / Via
Me and My Shadow was supposed to be a blend of both CGI and hand-drawn animation. It would have been the first DreamWorks Animation film to feature traditional animation since Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas in 2003. In 2012, there was a press screening of Me and My Shadow where Jeffrey Katzenberg fell asleep. The entire crew knew he wasn't into it. After the screening he said it wasn't a $200 million movie, which is what he wanted. It was originally scheduled for release in 2014, but in February 2013, the film returned to development with Mr. Peabody & Sherman taking its release date.
The film was officially cancelled by DreamWorks supposedly halfway through production.
