Trivia / Filmation

• What Could Have Been: Plenty of examples.
  • During their run on Superman the company experimented with a few more pilots. Among them included a show based on the Marx Brothers; a superhero series entitled Dick Digit and a cartoon based on Green Lantern (who would ultimately get a recurring segment as part of the Superman/Aquaman Hour of Adventure).
  • In 1969, the company was in talks with Toho over making a Godzilla film, but plans fell through. Also that year, talks of a Star Trek cartoon were instigated^note in this incarnation, the crew of the USS Enterprise were given child sidekicks. Though unlike most examples, it eventually did get made, but not as originally pitched.
  • Before the lawsuit with Disney, the company was set out to produce twelve films in their "New Classics Collection", a series of films meant to be sequels to the original literature they were to be based upon. This included Alice Returns to Wonderland, Frankenstein Lives Again! and The Time Machine II: The Man Who Saved the Future. Of them, only two were ever released (Emperor of the Night and Happily Ever After). And Frankenstein Lives Again!, the third in the series planned for release, was abandoned in pre-production after the lawsuit and subsequent failure of Emperor of the Night.
  • Hardchrome: The Last P.I., which would have been Filmation's first adult-oriented animation. The show was to have focused around a half-man, half machine ex-police officer turned private investigator named Hardchrome, who makes his living in the slums of Frisco City. The show was never made beyond some pitch artwork due to the Animation Age Ghetto being in full effect.
  • Also around this time, a pitch for a cartoon based on King Kong Lives titled Kid Kong was also made. It too fell through after issues with Dino De Laurentiis.
  • Just before the L'Oreal acquisition, two more cartoons — Bugsburg, a spin-off to Emperor of the Night, and Bravo, a spin-off to BraveStarr — were in production. Both shows were ultimately scrapped by L'Oreal despite having two episodes of each series completed, with recording and scripts finished for both shows.
  • Earlier in 2018, production artwork surfaced from a potential Ghost Busters animated series, which dated as early as 1982. It would have been a continuation of the 1975 series, as the characters bore Forrest Tucker and Larry Storch's likenesses. One can only assume that 1) production on this was halted to make way for He-Man and 2) it's why Filmation took Columbia Pictures to court.
  • They repeatedly attempted a game show called The Origins Game that combined live-action and animation; the premise was that the players would attempt to discern if the given origin of a word, saying, superstition, etc. is true or not. The first attempt was way back in 1971 with Burt Ward as host; Dick Patterson hosted a 1976 pilot with kids as contestants. Bob Eubanks hosted a third pilot in 1978, and the final one in 1982 (of which a segment circulates).
  • According to internet film reviewer Phelous, Filmation planned to release some Disney "pseudo-sequels": The Challenge of Cinderella, Bambi: Prince of the Forest, The Son of Sleeping Beauty, The Continuing Adventures of the Jungle Book, and Alice Returns to Wonderland.