Back to the Drawing Board - Disney Sequels That We Very Nearly Got

Okay, I know that in my most recent post I said that my next review would be of Loonatics Unleashed. But I didn't say that my next POST would be a review of Loonatics Unleashed. The review is coming, but first, here's another edition of Back to the Drawing Board, where we look at things that didn't even get a bit of test animation.

If you're a child of the 2000s, you're probably familiar with Disney's batch of direct-to-video sequels. From 1994's Aladdin 2: The Return of Jafar to 2008's The Little Mermaid 3: Ariel's Beginning, Disney released a ton of straight-to-DVD follow-ups to a good chunk of their animated films. Some of them even made it into theaters. Who cares if a film didn't need a sequel? It got one anyway. Now, some of these genuinely were pretty good...

But the ones that aren't good really are not good.

With all of the direct-to-video sequels that we DID get, it's interesting to look at a list of the ones that didn't get off the ground. And guess what we're going to be doing today?

Now, I'm perfectly aware that there are a few articles on other sites about this already. But hey, when has being unoriginal ever stopped me before?

Chicken Little 2

I found this on the Disney Wiki. I'm pretty sure it's fanmade, but here it is anyway.

Chicken Little is widely-regarded as one of the weakest entries of the Disney Animated Canon, but I myself do not hate it. I mean, yeah, it's by no means a MASTERPIECE, but I like Chicken Little, Abby, Runt, and Fish as characters and several of the jokes genuinely ARE pretty funny ("CURSE THESE GENETICALLY TINY LEGS!").

That being said, I don't think we really need to see the further adventures of Chicken Little and his friends. Which of course didn't stop the folks at Disney from coming very, very close to making a sequel. I've heard that it was going to be called either Chicken Little 2: Mission to Mars or Chicken Little 2: The Ugly Duckling Story. Judging by the name, I'm guessing that this would've been about Chicken Little and his friends going to Mars. I guess their mindset was, "Well, hey, if it worked for the Brave Little Toaster..."

Oh, and apparently there was also going to be a love triangle between Chicken Little, Abby, and a French sheep. Abby would've felt that she was at a disadvantage and given herself a makeover. I think it's pretty obvious how this would've worked out: Chicken Little would've chosen Abby over the sheep and Abby would've learned that it's best to be yourself and blah-blah-blah... NEXT SEQUEL!

The Jungle Book 3

I couldn't find any concept art for The Jungle Book 3, but I figured I had to
put at least ONE picture in this section, so have this.

I plan on making a more detailed review of The Jungle Book 2 at some point, so I'll just say right now that I don't think that it's particularly good. That being said, their planned thirdquel (is that a word?) does sound like it might've been pretty interesting.

See, they were gonna have Baloo and Shere Khan get captured by poachers and taken to a Russian circus or something. Mowgli and the gang would've rescued them, and Shere Khan would've pulled a Heel-Face Turn and become a good guy. If nothing else, this one DOES sound like it'd be a little more engaging than The Jungle Book 2.

Ironically enough, the plot of this is kind of similar to what the plot of The Jungle Book 2 was originally going to be... specifically, it would've focused on Baloo falling in love with a female bear and having to rescue her from poachers.

On a somewhat related note, I distinctively remember reading another early synopsis for The Jungle Book 2 about Baloo meeting Mowgli's daughter or something. I don't remember the name of the website, but I'm pretty sure I didn't imagine it...

The AristoCats 2

When it comes to Disney movies from the 1970s, The AristoCats was never one of its more popular ones. Heck, even nowadays it seems as though a lot of people regard it as one of Disney's weaker efforts (not to the same extent as Chicken Little, but still). But one thing is keeping the film from being part of the "films Disney doesn't care about even if they aren't even bad films" pile that Robin Hood, The Black Cauldron, and Brother Bear are currently sitting on - Marie (who's not even the main character of the film) is incredibly popular in Japan. I'm not sure how popular she is in America, but Disney seems to think she is. Hence, she gets tons of merchandise while the film's other characters get jack-squat. Personally, I've always preferred Berlioz myself.

How come Berlioz doesn't get as much merchandise as Marie
does? Just look at how cute he is!

So surprise, surprise, this planned sequel to The AristoCats would have focused on Marie. Specifically, she and her brothers were to face off against a jewel thief on a luxury cruise ship. She also would've gotten a love interest (to be honest, I've always liked the fan-couple of Marie and Oliver from Oliver and Company - what do you think the odds are that they would've just used him?*).

Interesting fact - at one point in development of The AristoCats, Thomas O'Malley
had stripes. Is it just a coincidence that they gave him stripes in the concept art?

According to Tod Carter, "This film went through multiple scripts and different incarnations and probably didn't really have a clear vision in the beginning. Our goal was to create that vision and tell a solid story. With the exception of retaining the main characters, we were given a good deal of freedom to create original story." He also said that the ship would've had a cast of characters from places like France, Scotland, England, Spain, places like that to give the film a "European flair".

Now, this one was actually VERY CLOSE to being made. I've heard that voices were being recorded for it - John Goodman was apparently going to voice Thomas O'Malley, and I think Jack Black was going to voice Scat Cat. If that's true, I hope they at least received paychecks. I don't know who the other voices were.

Ah yes, and originally the film was going to be traditionally-animated, but somewhere in production it became a CGI production - and if it sounds weird that they were going to make a CGI sequel to a hand drawn-animated movie, remember that Michael Eisner, who was the CEO of Disney at the time, also wanted to remake classic Disney films like Pinocchio and Dumbo in CGI in order to prove that it was "better" than hand drawn animation** (hmmm, a CGI remake of a hand-drawn Disney film? Doesn't that sound familiar?). Tod Carter admitted that he's not a fan of converting characters to CGI (unlike Disney, who LOVES IT) because "there is an importance in designing for your target medium." According to Tod, had they gone this route the characters wouldn't have had the same softness, which is essential to the characters' charm. Judging by this thing I found online, I'm gonna have to agree - characters from The AristoCats look kind of iffy in CGI:

 

Some characters should really just stay hand-drawn.

Dumbo II

This is another "we were THIS CLOSE to getting it!" project. You probably know that the 2001 Dumbo: 60th Anniversary Edition DVD features a sneak peak of the film. And then the project (obviously) got cancelled, meaning that Disney probably feels pretty stupid for putting that sneak peak on the DVD now.

Dumbo, nobody wants to see your rear end.

Apparently, the film would've taken place ONE DAY after the events of the first film. The circus would've received more baby animals - two bear cubs, a zebra, a hippo, and an ostrich - and they, along with Dumbo and Timothy, would've gotten stuck in New York and having to find their way back to the circus.

I can smell the plush toy sales already!

According to his resume, Broadway performer Danny Rutigliano (whose other connection to Disney is performing Timon in the Broadway adaptation of The Lion King) was to provide the voice of Timothy. I wonder if they were planning on having Dumbo talk in the movie like that Dumbo's Circus show did. Probably not, but I wonder how people would've reacted if they had.

Hercules II: The Trojan War

I was under the impression that Hercules (while a film that I personally like) wasn't exactly looked at positively by Disney. It under-performed at the box office (but to be fair, so did Fantasia), Greeks hated it for playing fast and loose with their mythology, and they don't acknowledge it that much today. Of course, it DID get a TV series (which amusingly enough did indeed have an episode called "Hercules and the Trojan War"), so what do I know?

Anyhow, Hercules II would've focused on Hercules and Meg living in Athens with their daughter, Hebe. When Hercules discovers that his old friend Helen was kidnapped by Paris of Troy, he would've rallied the Greek Army to go and saved her. I don't know how far into production this got before it was cancelled.

It is worth noting, however, that Disney DID get to make a direct-to-video sequel to Hercules in 1998, though. This was Hercules: Zero to Hero, which was just a compilation of episodes from the show bridged by segments featuring Hercules and Meg looking through Herc's yearbook. Just like how Tarzan and Jane was literally just three episodes of the Tarzan TV show bridged by a story about Jane trying to figure out what to get Tarzan for their anniversary. Kind of makes you wonder if they were considering making that a trend.

This was the only home media release of any episode(s)
of the TV series. Fortunately, the whole show is on Disney+.

Pinocchio 2

There have actually been non-Disney sequels to Disney's Pinocchio - specifically, there's Filmation's Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night (which featured the voices of Scott Grimes, Ed Asner, and Frank Welker... and got Filmation sued by Disney, too)...

And Belvision Studios' Pinocchio in Outer Space (which focused on Pinocchio and a "twurtle" named Nurtle going to outer space to defeat a giant space whale. I am not kidding).

Could Disney's own Pinocchio sequel have topped those? Well, it got cancelled, so we'll never know. In fact, all we DO know about this one is that the story would've had Pinocchio question why life is unfair sometimes. Which is incredibly vague. Who knows, maybe it would've been about Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket going to Japan and joining a group of ninjas, then fighting a giant catfish voiced by Brad Pitt or something. And now somebody's probably going to write that fanfiction.

Or maybe they would've just taken the lazy route and remade Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night. Filmation had closed by this point, and the movie's still kind of obscure, so who was gonna complain?

The Seven Dwarfs

Okay, so this is technically a prequel, not a sequel, but eh...

"The Seven Dwarfs" was to be directed by Mike D'lsa (who worked as an animator on films like Hercules and Home on the Range) and written by Evan Spilotopoulos (who actually helped write many of the other direct-to-video Disney sequels). The film would've explained how the Seven Dwarfs met (Dopey and Grumpy would've begun the movie living in a village full of dwarves, and then they would've gone on an adventure and met the other dwarves from there) and how the Evil Queen (whose name would've been revealed to be Narcissa) would've taken the throne from Snow White's father. Ah, yes, and it would've been CGI. Here's a piece of concept art featuring CGI Dopey.

Kind of creepy, isn't it?

As production went on, the film became focused on Dopey, because he and Grumpy are the only dwarves that Disney seems to care about (and even then, they might care about Dopey a little more than Grumpy - notice how Dopey's kid showed up in that Descendants film, but Grumpy's kid did not?***). Eventually Mike D'las left the project, and eventually Disney decided to cancel it. However, we did eventually get to see what the lives of the Seven Dwarfs were like before Snow White came along - Disney's television series The 7D, which I have not seen a single full episode of. But I've heard great things about it!

For those of you too lazy to read all that, here's a summary: Disney almost had its own direct-to-video version of Lord of the Rings starring the Seven Dwarfs.

UPDATE: I have found an animation test for the film! Give it a watch, it's pretty funny.

Say whatever you want about John Lasseter, but if he did thing one thing right, it was putting a stop to the direct-to-video sequels (otherwise, we probably would've had The Jungle Book 7 or The Princess and the Frog 3 or something by now). It is a shame that Disneytoon Studios had to close a few years afterward, because it could've been used for bigger and better things. But hey, at least Disney's days of making awful sequels is behind them!

Uh, okay, let me rephrase that... Disney's days of making awful ANIMATED sequels is behind them...

Never mind.

* Probably not very likely, but hey, they were originally gonna have Cruella DeVille be the villain of The Rescuers, and Penny from that movie was originally going to be the girl that adopts Oliver in Oliver and Company, so...

** Plus, there are at least two CGI direct-to-video sequels to TV specials that were stop-motion. So there's that...

*** While I'm on the subject of that... even if we can accept that somebody had a kid with Dopey, why is the son of Dopey, who's a dwarf, human? Did Dopey marry a human? Who is Dopey's wife?