History TroubledProduction / AnimatedFilms

* ''Blazing Samurai'' -- an animated re-imagining of Creator/MelBrooks' ''Film/BlazingSaddles'' set in a WorldOfFunnyAnimals, with Brooks himself onboard -- was originally announced in 2015 with a 2017 release date; however, the film's production immediately hit a snag when the original producer went bankrupt. While a new producer was eventually found, little else was heard about the status of the film until November 2019, when it was announced that production on the film was going back on track and that it would have a tentative summer 2021 release date by STX Films... which ''still'' wouldn't occur, seemingly eternally keeping the film on TheShelfOfMovieLanguishment as of November 2021.

* All that said, the film ''does'' have a following of sorts despite mixed reviews, many Tunes fans in particular citing it as a better representation of the characters than ''either'' of the ''Space Jam'' films.

** What well and truly killed the movie was once again Warner failing to choose a proper release date for the film, just as it killed each of WBFA's previous project. Originally set for release in July 2003, it was abruptly moved to November, claiming ''Finding Nemo'' was hogging the family audience around that time (never mind that by the original release date, ''Nemo'' was already starting to fall down in the box office and would likely have not been a ''direct'' competitor.) However, WB had effectively moved it from the frying pan to the fire, placing it in the middle of a particularly intense competition at the box office, amidst films like ''WesternAnimation/BrotherBear'', ''Film/TheCatInTheHat'', and ''Film/TheLordOfTheRingsTheReturnOfTheKing''... ''all'' of which had much more advertising. Not to mention, the initial invasion of Iraq that triggered the Second Gulf War would occur ''that week'', even further distracting the intended audience. With little-to-no promotion and no faith from WB, the film proceeded to flop ''hard'' at the box office, only making a total of $68 million on a budget believed to be around $80 million, directly resulting in the shuttering of Warner Bros. Feature Animation, killing any goodwill Dante still had in Hollywood, and almost singlehandedly ending any popularity the Tunes still had at that time; it wasn't until 2010 that they had a particular focus on Cartoon Network once more (whereas it was a staple of the net beforehand), and they wouldn't see the inside of a theater again until ''A New Legacy'' in 2021.

** What well and truly killed the movie was once again Warner failing to choose a proper release date for the film, just as it killed each of WBFA's previous project. Originally set for release in July 2003, it was abruptly moved to November, claiming ''Finding Nemo'' was hogging the family audience around that time (never mind that by the original release date, ''Nemo'' was already starting to fall down in the box office and would likely have not been a ''direct'' competitor.) However, WB had effectively moved it from the frying pan to the fire, placing it in the middle of a particularly intense competition at the box office, amidst films like ''WesternAnimation/BrotherBear'', ''Film/TheCatInTheHat'', and ''Film/TheLordOfTheRingsTheReturnOfTheKing''... ''all'' of which had much more advertising. Not to mention, the initial invasion of Iraq that triggered the Second Gulf War would occur ''that week'', even further distracting the intended audience. With little-to-no promotion and no faith from WB, the film proceeded to flop ''hard'' at the box office, only making a total of $68 million on a budget believed to be around $80 million, directly resulting in the shuttering of Warner Bros. Feature Animation and almost singlehandedly ending any popularity the Tunes still had at that time; it wasn't until 2010 that they had a particular focus on Cartoon Network once more (whereas it was a staple of the net beforehand), and they wouldn't see the inside of a theater again until ''A New Legacy'' in 2021. That said, the film ''does'' have a following of sorts, many Tunes fans in particular citing it as a better representation of the characters than ''either'' of the ''Space Jam'' films.

** First off, Creator/SethRogen spent ''eight years'' finding a studio interested in the project. Those that were sent the script rejected it due to the religious subject matter and obscene content. Even Sony, the eventual distributor of the film, rejected it at first sight until Rogen re-sent the script to them a couple of years later. Mind you, Seth had no problem pitching ''The Interview'' to Sony despite its heavy themes, so that should speak volumes.
** Once things started rolling, the problems only continued. Director Greg Tiernan was proven to be cruel towards the animators at Nitrogen Studios. He forced them to work overtime 7 days a week without extra pay thanks to the film's low budget. Any animators who stood up against Tiernan's tyranny would be fired and blackballed from the company along with going uncredited in the movie. Speaking of which, only ''half'' of the animators who worked on the film were credited. Sadly, Greg got away with his vile actions because there is no animation union in Vancouver, where Nitrogen is located. This means that the man could do as he pleased with his employees. Even worse, those poor people had nowhere to turn to stop the abuse.
*** Some good news did come to the animators eventually: the sued over the overtime pay and won three years after production ended.
** There were several changes made to the script during production at short notice and with little communication to the folks at Nitrogen, who had little to no idea what to do next.

* Socialist Hungary's ''Animation/SonOfTheWhiteHorse'' (1981) began as a combination of classic European folk tales to show history's repetition, only for paranoid studio heads to shoot down the idea because its message wasn't Marxist, forcing director Marcell Jankovics to rewrite the script so many times that he lost track of his goals. Working conditions and materials were horrible, the staff had to take up extra jobs to buy more equipment, produce their own celluloid paint and redo scenes. Inexperienced animators failed to get a grip on the unique art style and protested for a pay raise, and even then, the task brought some of them to tears. The director and his other colleagues had to help out with the animation, about a third of which Jankovics would later describe as sub-par due to said hardships and because the in-betweeners couldn't draw decent facial expressions. Folklore experts also bashed some of the film's artistic choices. In the end, the movie didn't meet Jankovics's original vision, could barely be marketed and caused him to lose the studio execs' favor, though he warmed up to it over the decades. To add salt to the wound, shoddy home video releases and mismanaged restorations messed up the film's colors until its 2019 remaster finally fixed them.

** ''WesternAnimation/TheThiefAndTheCobbler'', as documented in 2012's ''Persistence of Vision''. The film, originally conceived as Williams' magnum opus, took ''three decades'' to make due to Williams' incessant perfectionist attitude and constant story revisions that led to dozens of missed deadlines, rewrites, and redone animation. The project was being churned out at a slow pace, until Williams gained funding from Warner Bros. after his success on ''Film/WhoFramedRogerRabbit'' under the agreement that the film be completed for a specific date and amount of money. Unfortunately, Williams' perfectionism caused him to miss the deadline and, fifteen minutes shy of completion, turned it over to the Completion Bond Company and was replaced with low-budget animator Fred Calvert, resulting in a great amount of OffModel animation and {{Disneyfication}}. The resulting film was picked up by Miramax, who added unnecessary celebrity voices to the titular characters and songs to cash in on Disney's ''WesternAnimation/{{Aladdin}}'', along with retitling the film ''Arabian Knights''. The film, finally released in 1993, was a financial and critical failure, killing Williams' career and animation studio, causing him to retire from animating. It wouldn't be until a few decades later when dedicated fans would find unfinished footage and edit together ''The [=ReCobbled=] Cut'', a film that comes close to Williams' true vision for the film.
* ''WesternAnimation/WonderPark'', prior to its 2019 release, was originally directed by animator Dylan Brown, but when his history of sexual misconduct was discovered, he was booted off the project in 2018, despite having directed a vast majority of the movie. As a result of that, not only was the title changed (it was previously titled ''Amusement Park''), but [[WesternAnimation/CowAndChicken David Feiss]] was later pulled in to finish the movie. This entire scenario presented a pickle to Paramount: because Feiss directed very little of the movie, they would still have to give credit to Brown, but at the same time, they didn't want to give attention to Brown after his sordid history just came out. As a result, Paramount decided to credit ''no one'' as director, making it one of the extremely rare films to not have a credited director.

* ''WesternAnimation/ThePrincessAndThePea'': [[WordOfGod According to director Mark Swan in an interview]], the reason for most of the Disney Clichés were because the [[ExecutiveMeddling studios insisted on them]]. Not helping was the modest budget that hindered the ability to redo scenes that were coincidentally similar to other films that came out during production. http://www.fanpop.com/clubs/the-princess-and-the-pea/links/38439189/title/interview-with-mark-swan-princess-pea

* ''WesternAnimation/ThePrincessAndThePea'': [[WordOfGod According to director Mark Swan in a interview]], the reason for most of the Disney Clichés were because the [[ExecutiveMeddling studios insisted on them]]. Not helping was the modest budget that hindered the ability to redo scenes that were coincidentally similar to other films that came out during production. http://www.fanpop.com/clubs/the-princess-and-the-pea/links/38439189/title/interview-with-mark-swan-princess-pea

** For ''WesternAnimation/ATrollInCentralPark'', Bluth made the mistake of [[WritingByTheSeatOfYourPants shortening production]], hoping that it would inspire more spontaneity among his crew. It wound up being his worst-reviewed film ''and'' his lowest-grossing after Warner [[ScrewedByTheNetwork screwed over it's release]].

** ''WesternAnimation/TheLordOfTheRings'' was one of Bakshi's less problematic productions, but that's not saying much. Bakshi feuded with producer Saul Zaentz throughout production, the initial screenplay had to be heavily rewritten -- with the new writer, Peter S. Beagle, doing so for a derisory sum in exchange for guaranteed work on Zaentz's other productions... which he never received -- and Bakshi decided to shoot the whole thing in live-action and just rotoscope over it to save time, only to discover that he'd ended up making the scenes far too complex to rotoscope in any reasonable amount of time, forcing him to use a far quicker and cheaper method that resulted in massive {{Art Shift}}s throughout the entire film. Then, he was forced to stop the story after adapting the first two books due to budgetary reasons, only for the film to prove a BoxOfficeBomb, resulting in the property being handed back to Creator/RankinBass -- who had previously adapted ''Literature/TheHobbit'' -- to create an adaptation of ''The Return of the King''.

*** ''WesternAnimation/ToyStory4'' was slated to be co-directed with John Lasseter and Josh Cooley during the early stages of production, but 2017 saw a signficant shakeup in production staff that saw Lasseter leaving as he couldn't balance his time directing the film with his job running Disney Animation and Pixar at the same time. He would eventually be removed from the project entirely when sexual harassment allegations forced him to leave Disney and Pixar the following year. Around that same time, original screenwriters Rashida Jones (who was partially responsible for bringing the misconduct allegations against Lasseter into light) and Will [=MacCormack=] left the film due to CreativeDifferences, resulting in a huge majority of the original screenplay (estimated to be '''80%''', per Bo Peep voice actress Creator/AnniePotts) being thrown out and rewritten. There was also the fate of Mr. Potato Head, whose voice actor Creator/DonRickles [[AuthorExistenceFailure passed away]] before he could record his lines. Since Pixar didn't want to replace him or write the character out entirely, they had to go through decades of unused recordings of Rickles as the character in order to construct a new performance for him, and they had to consult with Rickles' estate just to do it.

** The team behind the movie, Elastic Productions, composed of a crew barely out of college, knew what they were making was garbage, but only did it so that they can [[IWasYoungAndNeededTheMoney get some work]]. The executives behind the movie’s concept wanted to make something to cash in on the Silly Bandz fad by making a micro budget direct-to-DVD movie before the fad was over. While most animated movies have a production time of three years, Bands only had eight months. Norby was the entire art department, who was in charge of character designs, storyboarding, and animatics, all within two months.

** When the storyboards were sent overseas for, to quote the film's art director, quite possibly the cheapest, shoddiest, most fly-by-night animation studio in all of China to animate, what they got was a product that had way worse animation than the final product, with ugly character designs, animation, and copyrighted texture photos lifted straight from Google Images (including a piece of unlicensed [[VideoGame/{{Pikmin}} Pikmin 2]] concept art). The animation company were also very lazy too; there was supposed to be a scene with a homeless person in a dumpster who was going to play with the titular Bands, but wasn’t given any clothes, so he ended up being cut from the plot, and was left in as an unintentionally creepy-looking, inanimate, [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking naked]] corpse.

* ''Blazing Samurai'' -- an animated re-imagining of Creator/MelBrooks' ''Film/BlazingSaddles'' set in a WorldOfFunnyAnimals, with Brooks himself onboard -- was originally announced in 2015 with a 2017 release date; however, the film's production immediately hit a snag when the original producer went bankrupt. While a new producer was eventually found, little else was heard about the status of the film until November 2019, when it was announced that production on the film was going back on track and that it would have a tentative summer 2021 release date by STXfilms... which ''still'' wouldn't occur, seemingly eternally keeping the film on TheShelfOfMovieLanguishment as of November 2021.

* The film version of ''WesternAnimation/AstroBoy'' managed to go through no less than three different directors, several different writers and a budget that spiraled out of control due to constant production delays. The bottom fell out when the film's production company went bankrupt a few months before opening. The final product manages to show the chaotic production with its unevenness and lack of direction in terms of plot.

*** It took forever for Bakshi and producer Steve Krantz to find a distributor, due to its premise of being an animated film filled with sex, drugs, political themes, and graphic violence. Warner Bros. had originally funded the film, but backed out after Bakshi refused to cast big-named actors and tone down the sexual content. Even after he did get funding, Bakshi still wasn't safe from ExecutiveMeddling, as Krantz forced him to change the original ending where [[spoiler:Fritz would have died from the Neo-Nazis' bomb]].

* ''Blazing Samurai'' -- an animated re-imagining of Creator/MelBrooks' ''Film/BlazingSaddles'' set in a WorldOfFunnyAnimals, with Brooks himself onboard -- was originally announced in 2015 with a 2017 release date; however, the film's production immediately hit a snag when the original producer went bankrupt. While a new producer was eventually found, little else was heard about the status of the film until November 2019, when it was announced that production on the film was going back on track and that it would have a tentative summer 2021 release date.

** ''WesternAnimation/BanjoTheWoodpileCat'' was an attempt by Bluth and his RagtagBunchOfMisfits working with him at Disney during UsefulNotes/TheDarkAgeOfAnimation to [[TaughtByExperience teach themselves how to make the kind of movies Disney refused to make any more]]. To do so required a lot of after-hours work done on a shoe-string budget over the span of six years, working entirely out of Bluth's garage and using second hand equipment which was starting to fall apart. At one point, a malfunctioning moviola used for pencil tests pissed Don off to the point that he [[PercussiveMaintenance kicked it]], resulting in the machine ''eating the film,'' at which point they sprang for a new one.

** Pre-production of ''WesternAnimation/{{Thumbelina|1994}}'' was slowed due to seemingly perpetual rewrites which lasted over a year. The original screenwriter had to be fired just to get physical production going, with Bluth writing the script himself and receiving his only solo screen writing credit.
** For ''WesternAnimation/ATrollInCentralPark'', Bluth made the mistake of [[WritingByTheSeatOfYourPants shortening production]], hoping that it would inspire more spontaneity among his crew. It wound up being his worst-reviewed film.

* ''WesternAnimation/JetsonsTheMovie'' had a bad production. Creator/DawsButler (Elroy Jetson) had died before production began, so he was hastily replaced by Patric Zimmerman. George O'Hanlon (George Jetson) had to have his lines repeated to him due to his stroke, and could only record for an hour at a time. In addition, both he and Creator/MelBlanc (Mr. Spacely) died during production (George reportedly died of a second stroke in the sound booth), so Creator/JeffBergman had to finish some of their lines. There was also severe ExecutiveMeddling by Universal such as replacing Creator/JanetWaldo with pop singer Tiffany as the voice of Judy Jetson, and by making it a musical due to their growing popularity in the late 80's. All of this caused the film to bomb at the box office, and kill off ''The Jetsons'' series.

* ''WesternAnimation/JonahAVeggieTalesMovie'': The movie originally wasn't supposed to be a movie, just a higher budget 45-minute episode (instead of the usual 30 minutes), but the staff had too much trouble keeping it that short and eventually decided to turn it into a full fledged movie, with much of the staff in hindsight realizing that was too big a leap for much of them to handle. The project soon turned into a mess of too many new hires with misplaced management, constant budget overruns, long working hours, and the end result was a numerous amount of layoffs. For more info, much of the story was covered in [[https://philvischer.com/news/what-happened-to-big-idea-part-1/ this series of blog posts by Phil Vischer himself.]]

** When ''Film/SpaceJam'' became the studio's first (and at the time only) success, Warner Bros. spent years trying to get a follow-up film off the ground, floating ideas like having the Looney Tunes star in movies with Creator/JackieChan, [[UsefulNotes/{{NASCAR}} Jeff Gordon]], Tony Hawk, and Tiger Woods. (''Space Jam'' would get a true sequel until ''[[Film/SpaceJamANewLegacy A New Legacy]]'' twenty-four years later.)

** ''WesternAnimation/SleepingBeauty'' wasn't as problematic as some of their other productions, but suffered from quite a few conflicts of egos behind the scenes, mostly stemming from lead background designer Eyvind Earle inserting himself into more and more aspects of production with Walt Disney's encouragement, in an attempt to produce a more stylized and modern-looking Disney animated feature. This caused the budget to balloon massively, and despite being second only to ''Film/BenHur'' at the 1959 box office, it received mixed reviews from critics and became the worst financial failure of any of the studio's animated canon until ''WesternAnimation/TheBlackCauldron'' nearly a quarter-century later, resulting in the animation department being heavily downsized afterwards. It wasn't until after Walt's death that the film was VindicatedByHistory and Disney would resume making fairy tale films with ''WesternAnimation/{{The Little Mermaid|1989}}'', which kicked off its Renaissance period.

** ''WesternAnimation/{{Bolt}}'' suffered from this in spades. The film was originally helmed by ''WesternAnimation/LiloAndStitch'' writer-director Creator/ChrisSanders, who wanted to make another quirky animated family film. To that end, he envisioned ''American Dog'', which followed a popular television star dog named Henry who (after being knocked out and waking up on a train to Nevada) enlists the help of two other talking animals, including a cat and oversized bunny rabbit, to drive him back home (while believing he's still in a television show). The film went through several different cuts (and suggestions from [[Creator/PixarRegulars John Lasseter and other Pixar directors]] on how to improve the film), but Sanders reportedly rejected all of the changes. Lasseter then fired Sanders from the project, causing the latter to jump ship to [[Creator/DreamWorksAnimation [=DreamWorks=]]], and the film was drastically reworked (under a constrained timeframe) into the final product. Tellingly, ''American Dog'' is not mentioned anywhere on the film's DVD features, and only receives a passing reference in the making-of book ''The Art of Bolt''.

** ''WesternAnimation/SleepingBeauty'' wasn't as problematic as some of their other productions, but suffered from quite a few conflicts of egos behind the scenes, mostly stemming from lead background designer Eyvind Earle inserting himself into more and more aspects of production with Walt Disney's encouragement, in an attempt to produce a more stylized and modern-looking Disney animated feature. This caused the budget to balloon massively, and despite ending up as among the top films in the 1959 U.S. box office, it received mediocre reviews and its bloated budget rendered it the worst financial failure of any of the studio's animated canon until ''WesternAnimation/TheBlackCauldron'' nearly a quarter-century later, resulting in the animation department being heavily downsized afterwards. It wasn’t until the years following Walt’s death that the film was VindicatedByHistory and that Disney would eventually resume making fairy tale films with ''WesternAnimation/{{The Little Mermaid|1989}}'', which kicked off its Renaissance period.
** ''WesternAnimation/TheFoxAndTheHound'' had many troubles going on with the production. Several veteran animators either retired or died early in production. Batches of animation drawings were stolen, leaving several scenes to be rotoscoped from pencil tests. Many of the studio's new young animators clashed with original director Wolfgang Reitherman's tough style, and while co-director Art Stevens usually sided with the younger animators, even he was adamantly against their insistence that the character of Chief should die in the film (Chief survives with a broken leg). These clashes drove Creator/DonBluth to lead an exodus of practically half the animation team, delaying its release by six months and turning him into Disney's ArchEnemy for a long while. Clashes still occurred between Rietherman, Stevens and Disney CEO Ron Miller, particularly with Stevens scrapping a planned song for the film performed by Phil Harris and Charo that Reitherman claimed was needed, believing the film did not have a strong second act; this ultimately led to Reitherman, who had directed nearly all of Disney's animated films since the 1960s and produced them since Creator/WaltDisney's death, to be KickedUpstairs. The film would still turn a profit, but the after effects of its production would carry over to...
** ''WesternAnimation/TheBlackCauldron'', the next film in the Disney animated canon, fared even worse. Original producer Art Stevens was kicked off the project early on (and subsequently left Disney) after his planned version was deemed too light-hearted. In turn, original directors Dave Michener and John Musker left to work on ''WesternAnimation/TheGreatMouseDetective'', and were replaced by ''The Fox and the Hound'' directors Ted Berman and Richard Rich. Production was divided into units that had little contact with one another, resulting in a lack of direction for the animators, a miserable working environment, and a revolving door of personnel. The task of animating the film was also arduous, thanks to the brand-new APT (animated photo transfer) process used in its production, its use of computer animation (the first animated feature to do so), and being shot in Cinerama; as a result, its budget ballooned to $44 million, the most expensive animated feature ever produced at the time. Meanwhile, in 1984, Walt Disney Productions President and CEO Ron W. Miller was ousted by the Disney board of directors (partly due to the constant budget overruns on ''The Black Cauldron''), and replaced in the latter capacity by Michael Eisner, who brought in Jeff Katzenberg to head the animation department. After a test screening of the film's rough cut proved far too frightening for the children in the audience, Katzenberg ordered heavy cuts on the film; when producer Joe Hale objected to the demands, Katzenberg responded by editing the film himself. When informed by Hale of what Katzenberg was doing, Eisner told him to stop, and while he obeyed, he requested that the film be delayed from its intended Christmas 1984 release date to July 1985, so that it could be reworked. In the end, the film's inflated budget, and an unusually dark nature that made it difficult to market, caused ''The Black Cauldron'' to be the biggest box-office bomb in the canon’s history until ''WesternAnimation/TreasurePlanet''. It not only made back less than half its budget, ''[[FranchiseKiller but nearly bankrupted]]'' '''''[[FranchiseKiller the whole animation studio!]]''''' Hale was subsequently fired from the company, with Berman only avoiding the same fate because he left voluntarily around the time the film was released, and neither they nor Miller would ever work in animation again; Rich lasted a little bit longer and was put to work on ''WesternAnimation/OliverAndCompany'', only to be fired himself after falling out with the new studio management. In 2016 the company announced they were looking into doing a more faithful adaptation of the source material ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfPrydain'' in live action, but little has been heard of it since as the film's reputation continues to make people wary of having anything to do with it.

* According to the animators who worked on it, ''Sir Billi'' suffered from a hellish production, to the point where many have called it the Scottish counterpart of ''Foodfight''. Originally promoted as the first animated film from Scotland -- though by the time it was actually released it had lost that honour to ''WesternAnimation/TheIllusionist'', forcing them to instead market it as the country's first computer-animated film -- which boasted a rapidly-growing animation industry thanks to investment from both the UK national and Scottish regional governments, the project was able to attract a lot of high-profile talents including Creator/SeanConnery, Creator/AlanCumming, and one-time ''Franchise/HarryPotter'' composer Patrick Doyle. Things rapidly fell apart in production, however, as director Sascha Hartmann rapidly proved to be a PrimaDonnaDirector who demanded that the animators use his unappealing character designs with no alterations, constantly made changes to scenes which required them to be hastily re-animated (causing the quality to suffer), and also repeatedly called back the cast to re-record their dialogue, which is noticeable in that Connery's voice is very inconsistent, either from poor health, disillusionment with the project, or both. On top of that, Hartmann not only fired any animator who protested the film's [[WhatDoYouMeanItsForKids inappropriately adult humour]] or his approach to managing the project in general, but even reportedly fired anyone who was actually managing to produce stand-out work, as he considered them a threat to his authority as director. By the end of production everything was being churned out hastily by a group of inexperienced animators, which ended up being evident in the less-than-stellar animation used in the finished product.

** ''WesternAnimation/TheSecretOfNimh'' was similarly made in Bluth's garage with a budget so small that the last quarter of production was funded by Bluth, Gary Goldman and John Pomeroy mortgaging their houses. The high-quality animation Bluth was aiming for required the animators to work 16 hours a day, sometimes even taking work home with them. It was then ultimately given too small of a release to profit on even its meager budget, not helped by the fact that it was competing with freaking ''[[Film/ETTheExtraTerrestrial ET]]!'' However, it was [[AcclaimedFlop well-reviewed]] enough to become a CultClassic, gaining the attention of [[Creator/StevenSpielberg a certain rival director]] which led to the creation of [[WesternAnimation/AnAmericanTail Bluth's more successful second film]].

** For ''WesternAnimation/ATrollInCentralPark'', Bluth made the mistake of [[WritingByTheSeatOfYourPants shortening production]], hoping that it would inspire more spontaneity among his crew. [[NiceJobBreakingItHero It wound up being his worst-reviewed film]].

*** ''WesternAnimation/ToyStory2'' didn't have it any better. The project had started as a Direct-to-Video movie, handled by a smaller part of Pixar who had made the ''Toy Story'' computer games while the main staff worked on ''WesternAnimation/ABugsLife''. Once they saw what had been done of the [=DTV=] movie, they were not only underwhelmed but horrified that Disney liked it enough to give it a theatrical run. Pixar begged Disney to let them scrap it and start over, to which they complied, but also refused to budge their stone-set November release date, only nine months away (this still being an era where computer animation [[AnimationLeadTime required just as much time to produce as traditional animation]]). This eventually took its toll on the exhausted and over-extended creative team, who then had to convince John Lasseter, who was planning to take a break after a grueling number of years heading up ''WesternAnimation/ToyStory1'' and ''WesternAnimation/ABugsLife'', to come in on short notice and help the team retool the film and get it out on time. The team were not only able to complete the film, but also churned out a film that more than held its own to the first; the meddling of Disney, though, helped kick-start the plan for the studio to operate independently, as well as dividing up their staff into smaller sections in order to not burn out their entire crew with each film. Additionally, all its progress was very nearly lost during production when [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dhp_20j0Ys a mistyped command to Pixar's servers]] resulted in more than 90% of the movie being deleted before the servers could be unplugged. To make matters worse, [[OhCrap the backups they had of the movie in-house were corrupted]]. It looked like the movie was down the crapper, but fortunately, the movie was saved when it was discovered that staff member Galyn Susman had the entire movie and all of its files copied to her home PC so she could work on it from home.

** ''WesternAnimation/TheEmperorsNewGroove'' started as ''Kingdom of the Sun'', a PrinceAndPauper epic directed by Roger Allers. Since the writers weren't very successful in adding original material and test audiences weren't reacting well, another director, Mark Dindal, was hired to see if things evolved. As [[AnimationLeadTime the deadline got closer]] and Allers and Dindal were basically working at two movies simultaneously (the former with a drama, and the latter with a comedy), the higher-ups intervened and Allers quit. After a six-month interval where Dindal and some writers reworked the movie, the film became the screwball comedy that eventually saw the light of day. The ending then had to be rewritten just before release because composer Sting disagreed with the moral message and was going to quit the project. It was all documented in ''Film/TheSweatbox'', a film shot by Sting's wife Trudie Styler, and [[ https://www.vulture.com/article/an-oral-history-of-disney-the-emperors-new-groove.html this oral history in 2020]].

** ''WesternAnimation/TheEmperorsNewGroove'' started as ''Kingdom of the Sun'', a PrinceAndPauper epic directed by Roger Allers. Since the writers weren't very successful in adding original material and test audiences weren't reacting well, another director, Mark Dindal, was hired to see if things evolved. As [[AnimationLeadTime the deadline got closer]] and Allers and Dindal were basically working at two movies simultaneously (the former with a drama, and the latter with a comedy), the higher-ups intervened and Allers quit. After a six-month interval where Dindal and some writers reworked the movie, the film became the screwball comedy that eventually saw the light of day. The ending then had to be rewritten just before release because composer Sting disagreed with the moral message and was going to quit the project. It was all documented in ''Film/TheSweatbox'', a film shot by Sting's wife Trudie Styler.

* ''WesternAnimation/FoodFight'', a film featuring [[Film/WhoFramedRogerRabbit Roger Rabbit]]-esque cameos by advertising mascots starring Creator/CharlieSheen was trapped in development for 10 years. Originally set for a 2003 release until being delayed to 2005, it became even further delayed when the harddrives containing all the animation files were stolen and the studio had to start all over again on an even lower budget. The final result was finished in 2009, given a small theatrical release and started to emerge direct to video in other markets in 2012.

*** ''WesternAnimation/ToyStory4'' was slated to be co-directed with John Lasseter and Josh Cooley during the early stages of production, but 2017 saw a signficant shakeup in production staff that saw Lasseter leaving as he couldn't balance his time directing the film with his job running Disney Animation and Pixar at the same time. He would eventually be removed from the project entirely when sexual harassment allegations forced him to leave Disney and Pixar the following year. Around that same time, original screenwriters Rashida Jones and Will [=MacCormack=] left the film due to CreativeDifferences, resulting in a huge majority of the original screenplay being thrown out and rewritten. There was also the fate of Mr. Potato Head, whose voice actor Creator/DonRickles [[AuthorExistenceFailure passed away]] before he could record his lines. Since Pixar didn't want to replace him or write the character out entirely, they had to go through decades of unused recordings of Rickles as the character in order to construct a new performance for him, and they had to consult with Rickles' estate just to do it.

** ''WesternAnimation/TheFoxAndTheHound'' had many troubles going on with the production. Original director Wolfgang Reitherman, who had directed nearly all of Disney's animated films since the start of the 1960s, was KickedUpstairs early on after falling out with Disney CEO Ron Miller. Several veteran animators either retired or died early in production, batches of animation drawings were stolen, leaving several scenes to be rotoscoped from pencil tests, and Creator/DonBluth led an exodus of practically half the animation team, which delayed its release by six months and turned him into Disney's ArchEnemy for a long while.