The History of "Quest For Camelot"

That post I did about the history of Home on the Range was, for the longest time, just going to be a one-off thing... like I said, it got its start as an edition of Back to the Drawing Board but I wasn't able to find out much about the original version of the movie, Sweating Bullets, while finding a lot of information about the development of the film we wound up getting, so I decided to work with it. But after watching various videos online about the development of certain movies, I started to think, what if I made this a recurring thing? What if I made MORE posts about the troubled productions of animated films infamous online for one reason or another? And thus, I now have a new series on this blog: The History of...

There's a very good chance you've heard of Quest For Camelot even if you haven't actually seen it. It's generally regarded as being one of the worst animated films of all time. Like, on par with Delgo and The Emoji Movie. For the longest time, I believed it was just as bad as everyone made it out to be... mostly because I, embarrassingly enough, was a fan of the Nostalgia Critic, and he did a negative review of the film. In fact, most of the criticisms aimed at the film are clearly because of his review: if you see somebody complaining about how the heroine looks like Belle from Beauty and the Beast (I mean, she DOES, but still) or that it doesn't make sense for the plants in the enchanted forest they go through at one point to move, you can tell they're a Nostalgia Critic fan.

I am no longer a fan of the Nostalgia Critic. Well, not a BIG fan, anyway. I'll admit that his pre-2013 reviews are still pretty funny, and most of the stuff he reviews genuinely ARE pretty bad, but I recognize that he's been an awful influence on the internet and has a habit of overreacting to films that are for the most part harmless. So, in preparation for this post, I decided to give Quest For Camelot a watch for the first time via Sling TV. What did I think of it? Well, it's bad, but it's not as bad as everyone makes it out to be. It's mostly just another generic animated film that wants to be like Disney's (and to a lesser extent Don Bluth's) but just isn't. The best thing about it is Devon and Cornwall, who are genuinely very funny characters and have most of the best lines. Aside from that, I found it to be just mediocre. There are far, far worse animated movies out there.

Have you ever wondered how Quest For Camelot became a thing? Probably not. But I'm going to tell you anyway! It actually has a fascinating history.

Concept art for the film.

Quest For Camelot was announced in 1995. It wasn't called Quest For Camelot at that point, it was called "The Quest For the Grail", and it was slated to be released in 1997 as opposed to 1998. The Los Angeles Times article announcing the film claimed that it would focus on "Susannah, an idealistic, independent young woman living in the days of King Arthur's Court, who goes on a dangerous quest for the Holy Grail to save her sister from a ruthless and powerful knight". Elizabeth Chandler was to be the screenwriter, and the co-directors were to be Bill Kroyer and Frederick DuChau.

What you might not have known is that Quest For Camelot is based on a book - specifically, The King's Damosel, a 1976 fantasy novel written by Vera Chapman.

I've never read the book, but according to Wikipedia it's about a character from the original Arthurian Legend named Lynette. And it's definitely not a book for kids. I won't go into details on why. So why on Earth would you adapt it into a kids' movie? Well, that wasn't the original plan. The film was supposed to be a lot darker, something with a PG-13 rating a la Ralph Bakshi's Wizards. But y'know how Rover Dangerfield was originally gonna be an R-rated comedy, only for the Warner Bros. executives to turn it into a kids' movie in an attempt to compete with the super-successful animated Disney movies of the 1990s? Yeah, the same thing happened here. I'm not sure how well Rover Dangerfield did at the box office, but if it was successful I guess the mindset was "Hey, if it worked the first time..."

According to Frederick DuChau, Warner Bros. had absolutely no clue about making animated movies. Apparently, the executives straight-up told Bill that he was going to make the film that wound up becoming Quest For Camelot and he was going to like it. "I, at the time, had just become a director in development at Warner Bros. Feature Animation, 'cause I'd just sold them two projects, and then one of them, I was attached as a director and that sort of made me get an office as opposed to being in a cubicle, and you are a director trying to push your project forward. And they really liked what I was doing, they liked my projects, they liked ME," Frederick explained. "In hindsight, probably because I was just too... not that I was a doormat, because I was doing the kind of stuff that they LIKED... they liked what they saw, basically. So right before they announced Quest For Camelot, they pulled me off my project that I was developing, and they got me into a room with Bill, we all got along really well... and they said 'Listen, this is how it's gonna go. Bill is gonna direct this movie and you're going to direct it with him. We do understand that Bill is the veteran director here." They didn't use these words, but it was very well understood that he was going to take the lead." He agreed with all of that, despite how skeptical he was that they really needed another King Arthur story.

A team of great animators was compiled. Production on the film started up... and then came to a halt when most of the studio's artists were reassigned to Space Jam. When storyboarding for the film began, the plot was divided up in sequences - Bill had half, and Frederick had the other half, and together they would present their sequences to upper management. "Which is already very wrong," Frederick said, "Because, if you're gonna hire directors to make a movie, let them make the movie. And they weren't, but if you were really good at running a studio, that doesn't mean that you are very good at making an animated movie from a creative point of view... those are completely different things. But, in animation back then, the management set it up that they got to decide everything and everybody else worked for THEM." When the sequences were presented to the higher-ups, they'd give feedback like claiming a sequence was "four minutes too long" - even though at this point it was just storyboards. Frederick was more willing to do what they wanted than Bill was, which led to Bill leaving production and having Frederick be the full director... that is, assuming they didn't find another co-director or replace him altogether.

Concept art by Cynthia Wells. She labeled it "badguyflirtswithsister_gif", so
I'm guessing this is concept art for the original version of the film about Proto-Kayley
saving her sister from a ruthless knight.

Frederick explained, "Bill came to see me... and again, I do not remember the exact words whatsoever... and basically said, 'Dude, we gotta stick together here. We're gonna walk. We should walk. This upper management doesn't know what they're doing. We need to walk... let's walk away.' I went into a panic... in my head, I was like, if I walk away from this, Warner Bros. is gonna go, 'What is this idiot doing? Walking away from an opportunity like this? He's never gonna direct anything in this town again.'" Plus, he had bills to pay. "I wasn't gonna drop the biggest paycheck I'd ever had. I wasn't gonna let that all just slip and fall away at all. There was no plan... there was nothing offered in return. So, no. That was not a good deal for me at all. They were really shocked when I was like 'Uh, no, sorry, I'm gonna keep doing this.' I could tell they were really disappointed when I didn't go, 'Yeah, man! You're right! Let's just walk!' So we both went our own ways. But it was bad... Bill and I, basically, I don't think we talked again. It was painful, it was frustrating, but there also wasn't any time to go 'All right, let's put the brakes on, let's sit down, let's talk about all of this.' On top of that, lots of rumors flew that I would have orchestrated his exit and all of that was one big plan..."

After that, the upper management decided to keep Bill on - they fired him but kept giving him a giant paycheck and had him and his wife just come in when they felt like it and roam the halls complaining to the crew about how much he hated the higher-ups. And in case you're wondering if Frederick ever regretted not walking with Bill, he said "No."

One member of the crew who DID leave production when Bill was fired was animator Darlie Brewster, who was going to be the lead animator of Garrett. He explained, "All of the best parts were the parts he boarded. The producer set us all up letting Bill pull in a crew, board the film and then pretty much stole it from him... what they turned it into was pretty much garbage."

More concept art by Cynthia Wells.

The Holy Grail was replaced as the thing everyone is trying to get their hands on by Arthur's sword Excalibur. Why? Well, for one thing, Warner Bros. was nervous about the inescapable religious connotations associated with it. But according to Max Howard, the president of Warner Bros. Feature Animation, "The symbol of Camelot is the power of Excalibur, and that became a more interesting theme: Whoever held the sword, held the power." There were so many delays during production that the release date was changed from November 1997 to May 1998.

Frederick wanted to hire a lot of "European comic book people" that he knew like Claire Wendeling and Frank Page, and had them design the characters and do visual development - really go back to what the King Arthur story is. It wasn't all just "knights in shining armor with lots of flags", it was the year 4000 and early Britain. He described it as "this whole world that you can tap into". A few months after doing that, the higher-ups rejected all of this because it wasn't anything like they'd seen before. For example, when Frank Page came in, Frederick put him on a sequence in which the characters encounter rat-like trolls. He went full throttle on that, with a very "earthy" feel and a lot of dark humor. This didn't make it into the movie. His designs for the dragons did, but they were "watered-down".

Eventually, the heads of Warner Bros. at the time, Robert Daly and Terry Semel, saw what Frederick's crew was doing and gave a mandate: since Disney already made The Sword in the Stone, an animated movie about a young King Arthur, we should never at any point in the film see a young King Arthur pull the sword from the stone because then you're just begging for comparisons to be made. Their response was, "What? We're doing a King Arthur movie and we can't do the most iconic scene from the story?" This is why, in the movie, when we actually see Arthur pull the sword from the stone near the beginning, it cuts away to the people that are just standing around watching him.

Concept art for Devon and Cornwall.

"I was surrounded by too many people that they assigned... 'Well, these people are gonna do layout, these people are gonna do colors, and backgrounds...' And before you know it, you basically have an old Disney crew, doing something that they weren't comfortable with either," Frederick lamented. "Because, again, the movie wasn't set up from a director's point of view, around he or she with the people they would like to have around to do their vision and so on. It was backwards, it was from the top. Y'know, 'We just get a bunch of people, tell 'em what to do, hire enough people that worked at Disney and hopefully something good will come out.' And so, this is where I failed completely, I had no experience how to get my vision done. Most people probably didn't even know I had a vision." All those European artists were also pretty miffed about their work on the film being either watered down or cut.

In fact, the movie originally wasn't even going to be a musical. That was another decision from the higher-ups: they wanted it to be "Little Mermaid with swords on horses". This was both because of the whole "trying to be Disney" thing - Disney movies have songs, so we should have songs too! - and because the wife of Bob Daly was Carole Bayer Sager, an Oscar-winning songwriter and her group of friends really wanted to write songs for an animated movie. Y'know that really popular song from the movie performed by Celine Dion? "The Prayer"? Y'know how it plays over an unfitting chase sequence between Kayley and Ruber's minions? Apparently, that was delivered and recorded so late into production that the movie was practically finished and they went back in and re-animated a bunch of stuff to find a spot to put it in (Frederick thought it worked really well, but a lot of us beg to differ).

Frederick DuChau admitted that the studio's vision was only "If Disney did it, we should do it too." "They had no vision other than 'Well, when I was a production coordinator at Disney during Aladdin, we did THIS!', which has nothing to do with running a studio..." he claimed. "Lots of studios were starting up. FOX had one, DreamWorks just started... and so everyone who was a production assistant at Disney would become a department head at one of these studios." Even just watering the flowers at Disney could get you a job as president of feature animation, it would seem.

Concept art of Kayley and Ruber.

Quest For Camelot's production had the unintended consequence of another animated film, one that was released before it but while it was in production, being a flop: Cats Don't Dance. That movie was originally in development at Turner Feature Animation when Time Warner purchased the studio just before it came out. Which meant Warner Bros. would have to release Cats Don't Dance. And they really didn't want Cats Don't Dance to outperform and overshadow Quest For Camelot, so they released it on a crowded Easter holiday weekend and barely marketed it (there was ONE POSTER made for the movie, toys in Subway kids' meals, and that's about it).

The film's producer, Frank Gladstone, wound up leaving the project in February 1997 and was replaced by Dalisa Cohen - who, according to animator David Germain, HATED animation for some inexplicable reason and apparently only got put on the project as punishment for a previous film she co-produced, A Little Princess, being a flop. Most of the animation was done at the main Warner Bros. Feature Animation facilities located in Glendale, California and London, England. Yowza! Animation, Heart of Texas Productions, and A. Film A/S also worked on the film. For the CGI effects, Silicon Graphics' Alias Research software was used.

Most of the animators involved in Quest For Camelot hated it. Lauren Faust has admitted that they all knew it was going to bomb and dubbed it worse than Don Bluth's 1990s films. If you go on Facebook, you can find a lot of comments from animators who worked on the film complaining about how much of a pain it was. For example, David Lee Thompson said, "The movie was a bunch of missteps and they switched everyone around after I signed on. I was on the Kayley team. They changed directors, designers, animators, writers, and on and on. Kayley was first Suzanna... then Lynett and finally Kayley... they put the songs in the worst places. Putting the award-winning song over a chase sequence. Kayley's first song where we are supposed to really care for her was farmed out and then crapped out. She floated from rock to rock... I just have post-dramatic stress all these years later... the original artwork and development was stunning and what made me want to be on the production to start with. There were some great animators on the project and people I still hold in high regard to this day. I remember Max Howard standing up in front of us all and saying we were going to do something that Disney couldn't touch. Something uniquely WB and then they say we are doing Quest."

Concept art by Michael Gagne.

Jerome K. Moore, likewise, had this to say: "WB's first mistake (of which there were many) was in trying to emulate the Disney style. I mean, we're talking about a studio that was and still is at the top of the animation game, and WB tries to copy their expertise? Better to have done what they did in the old days, with Looney Tunes' Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Termite Terrace being the antithesis of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and the Nine Old Men. Then they lost the Kroyers, the couple that started out designing the whole Quest For Camelot production. They couldn't pick a consistent direction with Kayley, originally making her more heroic and tomboy-ish, then switching to make her more girlish. It was indeed an absolute mess. As I sat up there on the 19th Floor of the building in Glendale, I mostly heard complaints from all the animators and production assistants."

Steve Garcia, meanwhile, said, "I was at Warners at this time. Even though I had an offer from DreamWorks to go help them finish up the project they were doing at the time (I think Prince of Egypt?) and then go onto their next film, I opted to stay because I reeeeeeally wanted to work with Brad Bird on his flick, The Iron Giant. My one stipulation was that I NOT work on Camelot. So... they put me to work in viz 'til Giant was ready to go to animation. Man did they beg for those of us that weren't on to take scenes and help out. It was mired in one terrible problem after another. It was a train wreck. Warners was a company that tempted a lot of talents to come on (including me) because they were saying they wanted to be the non-Disney studio. Doing different types of things. And I can tell you right now... that what we were doing in viz dev... it WAS different. But... that said... it did raise suspicions with us when the first [CENSORED] movie that they were putting out... was nothing more than Disney Lite." No wonder near the end of production, the entire crew bailed to go work on The Prince of Egypt (actually, Warner Bros. lent DreamWorks their crew).

John Alvin's concept art for the film's poster.

Let's talk about the voices. Eric Idle stated on Twitter that he and Don Rickles "ad-libbed for days", but for some reason, the filmmakers "didn't use a single line". Do those recordings still exist? I'd like to hear those ad-libs. Christopher Reeve was originally supposed to voice either King Arthur or Merlin, but eventually was unavailable to record new dialogue. According to Darlie Brewster, Garrett was originally going to be voiced by Jared Harris - his readings were incredible and he fleshed out the character, but for some reason he got replaced by Cary Elwes. As for the voice of Ruber, Gary Oldman... TV Tropes claims that he was drinking alcohol while in the recording booth and would record his lines drunk. Take that with a grain of salt.

How did Warner Bros. promote the film? Boy howdy did they make merchandise: dolls, video games, books, you name it. Toys were included in Wendy's Kids Meals. There were tie-ins with Tyson Chicken, Kraft Foods, Frito-Lay, Kodak, and Act II popcorn. Devon and Cornwall hosted the Kids' WB Saturday morning lineup on May 9th (Eric Idle reprised his role as Devon for it, Maurice LaMarche filled in for Don Rickles as the voice of Cornwall). Six Flags Great Adventure received a live show called Quest For Camelot Nights, which featured live characters, fireworks, pyrotechnics, and water effects.

From left to right: Garrett, Kayley, Devon, Cornwall, Merlin, and...
I'm not sure who that guy in blue behind Kayley is. King Arthur?

When the film was released, it wound up being a flop - the budget was forty million dollars and it only made $38.1 million at the box office. Why? After all, being a poorly-recieved movie isn't enough for a film to flop. Otherwise that live action Smurfs movie from 2011 wouldn't have become a hit. I don't think it was solely because it was such a blatant Disney wannabe either... Don Bluth's Anastasia, which was released the previous year, was also a pretty blatant Disney wannabe and it did pretty well at the box office. Apparently, one of the reasons it didn't do better is because of the tie-in with Wendy's - the toys also gave tickets for adults to pay child admittance fees to see the film, which cut a lot of the profits in half.

And as a result, Warner Bros. completely gave up on the idea of doing theatrical animated films. The three films they still had in production - The Iron Giant, Osmosis Jones, and Looney Tunes: Back in Action - were basically sabotaged like Cats Don't Dance was, given little advertising and crappy release dates. Whatever plans they had for animated films after that were all scrapped: an adaptation of The Snow Queen, King Tut, Arrow, the list goes on. Apparently, there were also plans for sequels to Quest For Camelot, based on Vera Chapman's books The Green Knight and King Arthur's Daughter, but those got scrapped too. Oh, and there was also going to be a touring live production debuting at Six Flags Fiesta Texas and then traveling to different renaissance fairs in the United States, but that got the axe as well. On the bright side, Six Flags Great Adventure's Quest For Camelot Nights stuck around for four years because it was pretty popular.

Presented by Tyson Chick'n Chunks!

So, basically, it's another case of the higher-ups at a movie studio having no idea what they were doing and then refusing to admit they were at fault when the film underperforms. Did Quest For Camelot deserve to bomb? I'm not sure. Even if the movie itself isn't great, I think its flopping did more harm to the theatrical animation industry than good, and I don't think the movie itself is that bad - far worse animated movies have been box office hits (I haven't seen either of the Minions movies, but somehow I doubt they're better than Quest For Camelot). Then again, if it HAD been a success, then Warner Bros. would have basically been "validated" in their meddling with the movie and made sure all of their post-Iron Giant animated films were just like it. Boy, this is a double-edged sword (no pun intended), isn't it?

Ah well. At least Eric Idle had fun working on it.

Sources:
- https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-05-26-ca-6143-story.html
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeCFeEuyzFk
- https://variety.com/1997/film/news/warner-bros-searches-for-boxoffice-grail-111662043/