Adaptation Expansion in Animated Films.
- Since The 3 Little Pigs: The Movie is based off of a rather short story, several characters and subplots are added, as well as character motivations changed/expanded, to make it into a feature length flick. The Big Bad Wolf is an inn owner who wants to serve the pigs to his guests for a lucrative Dinner Theatre at his establishment, he works with a fox who is a meat supplier with his own plans for the pigs, the pigs have a mouse friend named Felix, Felix has a girlfriend, etc. etc.
- The Bad Guys (2022) is based off the book series of the same name, which begins with Mr. Wolf having decided to reform from his villainous ways and recruits the others to join his cause. His time as a criminal are only mentioned in passing or, in the later books, shown via flashback. The film begins with the gang at the height of their criminal careers and then shows the moment that causes Mr. Wolf to begin rethinking his life of crime.
- Almost all of the Barbie animated movies are this, seeing most of them are based off of short tales, such as Barbie in the Nutcracker, Barbie of Swan Lake, Barbie in the 12 Dancing Princesses, etc. In Barbie as Rapunzel, the original story is a Dream Sequence.
- Batman: The Killing Joke, based on the comic of the same name, includes a prologue to help expand the runtime of the movie and (ostensibly) set-up the story, including a focus on Barbara Gordon's time as Batgirl. This actually wound up being pretty unpopular, as the opening forty minutes have little connection to the main story and feature some... questionable choices in characterization.
- A Bug's Life: This film is essentially a retelling of Aesop's "The Grasshopper and the Ants" spread out to full-feature-length. It's also something of a Deconstruction of the original fable; instead of starving to death when winter comes, normally the grasshopper mugs the ant and takes his stuff.
- Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs expands from original children's book about falling food getting out of proportion, to a movie about a quirky scientist who creates an invention that turns water into food, his troubling relationship with his father after the death of his mother, Chicken Brent!, the evil obese mayor, sparking love interest between inventor and secret geek female weather reporter, MR. T!, Monkey!, Ratbirds!, Sardines!, etc...
- Coraline, adapted from the original children's book, makes several significant changes. Most notable are the addition of Wybie, a neighbor boy who turns out to be the grandson of the woman who owns the house and a friend of the Black Cat. The bit with the rag doll is also a movie-only inclusion. The movie also expands on the identity of one of the little girls in the Room Behind The Mirror and her connection to movie-only Wybie, it also completely erases the implication that the Other Mother is one of The Fair Folk whose realm is not the only one out there. The biggest discrepancy here is that in the book, that little girl isn't human, she's a pixie, and the Beldam's first victim.
- According to Word of God, director Henry Selick added Wybie in as he thought it would feel odd with just Coraline talking to herself through half of the film, which in fact adds a certain poignancy to the question, "Why were you born?"
- The Coraline video game lets you explore the barn that was near the Pink Palace to order to expand on gameplay, since traipsing around the Pink Palace can only do so much in terms of variety, even with the freely-explorable Other World the game offers.
- Tim Burton's Corpse Bride was initially a mere short story that he penned (itself based on a folk tale), then expanded upon.
- All of Disney's fairy tale-based films fall under this trope by default as the original fairy tales are typically rather short and simplistic, requiring a good amount of character and plot expansion to stretch them out to an hour and half. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs padded out its length with several dwarf-centric scenes, Sleeping Beauty greatly expanded the roles of the fairies and gave the prince something to do other than be lucky enough to be standing in front of the thorns just as the century-long spell expired, etc.
- Disney's Dumbo was based on a very short (thirty-six pages) children's book. Even with a decent amount of padding, the final film clocks in at only sixty-four minutes. They could've done without "Pink Elephants on Parade", though.
- Epic (2013) is a loose expansion of William Joyce's The Leaf Men And The Brave Good Bugs.
- Roald Dahl's children's novel Fantastic Mr. Fox was adapted by Wes Anderson. Much of the expansion comes in the form of focusing on the animals' plans to evade the farmers, the relationships and development of characters. It also gave Ms. Fox a name--Felicity. The ending to the movie was found in Dahl's archives.
- The original Frankenweenie was 30 minutes. When Tim Burton revisited it years later, he turned it into a 87-minute film with a subplot involving other kids using Victor's formula to turn their own dead pets into animal versions of classic movie monsters (and Gamera), culminating with Mr. Whiskers (the vampire cat) being involved in the climatic windmill scene.
- Meet the Robinsons added a whole time travel plot around the children's story A Day With Wilbur Robinson. The second act, where Lewis meets the Robinson family and looks for Grandpa's teeth, is the only part of the movie that's actually in the book.
- Mortal Kombat Legends: Snow Blind uses Kano's arcade ending from Mortal Kombat 11 as the basis for its story, albeit with some tweaks, showing Kronika as dead rather than merely having given up her powers to Kano and Kano ruling an After the End world that he himself made with her powers.
- Mr. Peabody & Sherman is based on the Peabody’s Improbable History segments barely over five minutes long from Rocky and Bullwinkle.
- The Nightmare Before Christmas likewise started as a poem by Tim Burton.
- Night of the Animated Dead: While it is mostly faithful to the original film, the movie does add a few interactions between characters, and includes a Flashback to Ben finding the truck he used to get to the house.
- Olive, the Other Reindeer was turned by Matt Groening and Drew Barrymore from a tiny 20-page children's book into a 90-minute cartoon movie. That rocks. They even preserved the drawing style of the book.
- The Polar Express is a 100 minute long movie based on a 32-page book that can be read in less than 10 minutes, which some critics and audience members complained felt like a 20-minute short with an hour of filler added onto it. That certainly doesn't stop it from grabbing at your heartstrings, though, and the animation is quite breathtaking, too.
- Similar to the live-action The Ten Commandments, The Prince of Egypt expanded upon the details in the Book of Exodus to show the relationship between Moses and the Pharaoh. Both films depict it as Sibling Rivalry. Nothing in scripture itself says Moses and the Pharaoh were raised as brothers.
- Shrek was originally a children's book that contained almost nothing that appears in the film. Somehow, we ended up with a large franchise consisting of four movies and a Broadway musical. And then Puss-in-Boots became an Ascended Extra and got not one, but two movies.
- Son of the White Horse: Based on straightforward folktales of a hero chasing a gnome, battling dragons, rescuing princesses, riding a griffin and putting up with his unhelpful goons/siblings, the movie's first act and its ending added an elaborate framing story of an otherworldly kingdom on top of the World Tree taken over by dragons, the fall and rise of ancient deities and the salvation of the entire universe, and expanded its symbolism to our real life contemporary world. The additions also tied all characters and creatures together with a strongly connected past and backstory, when most of them had no relation to each other, nor any backstories in the tales. The visual symbolism and all the allusions to time, seasons, religions, constellations and sex are unique additions too.
- Superman vs. the Elite stretches out a single-issue comic book story into a 76 minute film. The writers compensated for the short length of the original comic by adding in a Troubled Backstory Flashback for Manchester Black, a subplot concerning Atomic Skull and expanding on Black's and Lois Lane's relationships with Superman.
- Tangled has Rapunzel spend more time outside her tower than inside it for the film's running time, etc.
- Tubby the Tuba (1975), based on the 1945 song of the same name, adds more scenes such as Tubby joining the circus and then visiting the Singing City.
- The film adaptation of the Hudson Talbott children's book We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story, transformed a simple Fish out of Water tale about large prehistoric creatures dropped into the strange new setting of modern-day New York into a full-blown Disneyfied epic. The dinosaurs got some new friends in the form of runaway disillusioned children, an evil circus owner and his Cereal That Makes You Evil (seriously). Walter Cronkite also voices a scientist who gives them a mission of "making children's dreams come true". This is meant to save the world. Somehow. It is well worth it to hunt around for Talbott's sequel book, Going Hollywood. The story has Rex and pals go to Hollywood to have their life story made into a movie. Much hilarity ensues. One can't help but wonder...
- Yellow Submarine, which expanded a Beatles song into a movie.
