Thursday, May 25, 2006

Story Changes - Part II

* The story supervisor of "Aladdin" recently told me: "After an early screening of the picture [that didn't go too well], Jeffrey Katzenberg said, 'Even Steven Spielberg has an occasional flop.'"... * Walter Elias Disney reworked "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" dropping almost-completed sequences because the film wasn't working the way he wanted. And "Snow White" -- as we all know -- was a horrid disaster, causing the Disney studio to go bankrupt. (In an alternate universe. In our reality, it was the highest grossing film in 1938. Or in all of film history to that time.) * "Shrek" changed directors, changed story supervisors, and had the lead voice-actor die. Chaos, total chaos. (Here are other examples...and reduncancies.) (Just to be fair and balanced, "The Black Cauldron" -- less than a huge hit -- also had it's story revamped a couple of times before release. Sometimes, change is bad.) And word reaches us that "Simpsons, the Movie" is also going through reworkings after a screening. Just like "Meet the Robinsons," "American Dog," "Flushed Away," and probably two or three other features I don't know much of anything about. The only difference -- and it's slight -- is that "The Simpsons" theatrical is the first animated feature where story is being done under the auspices of the WGA(w).

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

shrek went through more producers than Heidi Fleiss

Kevin Koch said...

Good one! Of course, all those producers now get to run around with 'Shrek' on their resumes, so they can get terrible films greenlighted.

Shrek was also going to be the first Mo-Cap feature. Given everything that production went through, it has to be the most unlikely film franchise of all time.

Anonymous said...

mo-cap...
then models with cg characters...

those early development sets were great...

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