17 Forgotten Disney Movies That Were Never Made
A dream is a wish your heart makes...and then cancels.
#1 Gigantic
This was going to be Disney's adaptation of the classic Jack and the Beanstalk tale, set for release in 2020. However, in October 2017, Disney officially announced it was dropping the project with Ed Catmull — president of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios — saying, "Sometimes, no matter how much we love an idea or how much heart goes into it, we find that it just isn’t working. With Gigantic, we’ve come to that point, and although it’s a difficult decision, we are ending active development for now."
#2 Newt
This is Pixar's first (and only) cancelled project, which was set for a 2012 release. According to Disney's press release, it followed "the last remaining male and female blue-footed newts on the planet, Newt and Brooke." In an interview with Fast Company in 2015, Ed Catmull explained that when they gave the project to Pete Docter (director of Up) he said, “I’ll do it, but I have another idea altogether, which I think is better.” (The idea turned out to be Inside Out.) "That was the reason we didn’t continue with Newt," said Catmull.
#3 King of the Elves
Based on the fantasy short story by Philip K. Dick (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, The Man in the High Castle), this Disney film was supposed to come out on Christmas back in 2012. A blurb about the story read, “a fantastic and imaginative tale about an average man living in the Mississippi Delta, whose reluctant actions to help a desperate band of elves leads them to name him their new king.”
#4 Fraidy Cat
Once called a "cartoon film noir thriller," this would've been like a satire of Alfred Hitchcock films. A short description said, "In Fraidy Cat, a chubby housecat with frayed nerves is torn off his comfy couch and dropped smack dap in the middle of a Hitchcockian thriller when he is accused of a crime he didn't commit." Disney animation directors Ron Clements and John Musker started on the idea in 2004, but in 2005 the project was canceled.
#5 Wild Life
This reimagining of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion would've been Disney's first fully CG animated, non-Pixar film. (For the record, that became Chicken Little in 2005.) The story took place in a nightclub and followed the owner and the "dwindling popularity of the club's singing starlet Kitty-Glitter."
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This was going to be Disney's adaptation of the classic Jack and the Beanstalk tale, set for release in 2020. However, in October 2017, Disney officially announced it was dropping the project with Ed Catmull — president of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios — saying, "Sometimes, no matter how much we love an idea or how much heart goes into it, we find that it just isn’t working. With Gigantic, we’ve come to that point, and although it’s a difficult decision, we are ending active development for now."
#2 Newt
This is Pixar's first (and only) cancelled project, which was set for a 2012 release. According to Disney's press release, it followed "the last remaining male and female blue-footed newts on the planet, Newt and Brooke." In an interview with Fast Company in 2015, Ed Catmull explained that when they gave the project to Pete Docter (director of Up) he said, “I’ll do it, but I have another idea altogether, which I think is better.” (The idea turned out to be Inside Out.) "That was the reason we didn’t continue with Newt," said Catmull.
#3 King of the Elves
Based on the fantasy short story by Philip K. Dick (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, The Man in the High Castle), this Disney film was supposed to come out on Christmas back in 2012. A blurb about the story read, “a fantastic and imaginative tale about an average man living in the Mississippi Delta, whose reluctant actions to help a desperate band of elves leads them to name him their new king.”
#4 Fraidy Cat
Once called a "cartoon film noir thriller," this would've been like a satire of Alfred Hitchcock films. A short description said, "In Fraidy Cat, a chubby housecat with frayed nerves is torn off his comfy couch and dropped smack dap in the middle of a Hitchcockian thriller when he is accused of a crime he didn't commit." Disney animation directors Ron Clements and John Musker started on the idea in 2004, but in 2005 the project was canceled.
#5 Wild Life
This reimagining of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion would've been Disney's first fully CG animated, non-Pixar film. (For the record, that became Chicken Little in 2005.) The story took place in a nightclub and followed the owner and the "dwindling popularity of the club's singing starlet Kitty-Glitter."
