History TroubledProduction / AnimatedFilms

** ''WesternAnimation/SleepingBeauty'' wasn't as problematic as some of Disney's other productions, but suffered from quite a few conflicts of ego 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. As for the voice cast, in regards to the role of King Stefan, they replaced Hans Conried (who was working on this film when he was responsible for performing live-action reference as King Stefan for animators to capture his expressions and movements for the character) with Taylor Holmes for no apparent reason, making it unknown who voiced Lord Duke. This led the budget to balloon massively, and despite being second only to ''[[Film/BenHur1959 Ben-Hur]]'' at the 1959 box office because of its reissues, the film received mixed critical reviews and became the worst financial failure in the Disney animated canon until ''WesternAnimation/TheBlackCauldron'' nearly a quarter-century later, resulting in the animation department being heavily downsized until ''WesternAnimation/TheGreatMouseDetective'' helped save the studio, thanks to it’s critical and financial success. 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/SleepingBeauty'' wasn't as problematic as some of Disney's other productions, but suffered from quite a few conflicts of ego 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. As for the voice cast, in regards to the role of King Stefan, they replaced Hans Conried (who was working on this film when he was responsible for performing live-action reference as King Stefan for animators to capture his expressions and movements for the character) with Taylor Holmes for no apparent reason, making it unknown who voiced Lord Duke. This led the budget to balloon massively, and despite being second only to ''[[Film/BenHur1959 Ben-Hur]]'' at the 1959 box office because of its reissues, the film received mixed critical reviews and became the worst financial failure in the Disney animated canon until ''WesternAnimation/TheBlackCauldron'' nearly a quarter-century later, resulting in the animation department being heavily downsized until ''WesternAnimation/TheGreatMouseDetective'' helped save the studio. 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/WreckItRalph'' went through a number of problems along the way. Originally planned to have been screened before ''WesternAnimation/{{Tangled}}'', it had went through a number of cancelled and uncancelled calls along the way before finally getting the go-ahead. Also, the many video game companies ([[ValuesDissonance especially Japanese ones]]) had strict guidelines as to how their characters should act; Nintendo had guides as to how [[Franchise/SuperMarioBros Bowser]] should drink a cup of coffee, Sega had them reanimate a scene were [[VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog Sonic]] loses some rings because they said he could only lose rings if he were hit, and the only reason Q*Bert got prominence in the movie was because Namco took offense at VideoGame/DigDug being depicted as destitute.

*** Williams, having illustrated Idries Shah's books about the Middle Eastern folk hero and [[TheTrickster wise fool]] Mullah Nasruddin, set out to adapt the stories into an animated film. Shah and his family sponsored the film, with Shah's brother Omar as producer, and it formally began production in 1964. By 1972, Williams and his studio had produced three hours of footage which needed to be structured into a cohesive movie. However, he soon realized thatthe Shah family wasn't keeping track of the film's finances and accused Omar of embezzling him. Williams lost the rights to the film in the resulting legal kurfuffle, but was allowed to keep his original character designs, most notably a thief, around whom a new story was written.

** The fact that the film was being made atthe Fleischers' new studio in Miami (which was far too small to hold the 700+ staffers needed to complete the film) meant that if any equipment broke down, it would have been difficult to get it fixed in any reasonable amount of time. The lack of film industry presence in Miami also meant that, unless they wanted to use local actors or their woefully inadequate amateur orchestra (which was impeding the sound quality of the shorts from mid-1938 onward), they had to outsource recording sessions to West Coast studios (which they did for ''Gulliver'', ''WesternAnimation/MrBugGoesToTown'' and the WesternAnimation/SupermanTheatricalCartoons).

* Creator/{{Disney}} is notorious for having multiple movies that went through this. Some of them went on to become their finest works, while others [[OldShame they would much rather forget]]. Moreover, during the reign of Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg, it was even ''chronic'':
** ''WesternAnimation/{{Dumbo}}'' was their first seriously problematic production. They had to make it on a lower than usual budget due to the studio's financial troubles, and then things really hit the fan when most of the studio's animation staff went on strike over atrocious working conditions, resulting in a lot of the film being completed by junior animators who weren't financially secure enough to go on strike, plus a few more experienced animators who crossed the picket lines knowing that the studio would more than likely be forced to close down if they didn't get ''Dumbo'' out on time, though even then only produced work that met the bare minimum standard that Disney would accept. The end product was the biggest critical and commercial success Disney had since ''WesternAnimation/SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs'', but Walt Disney himself looked back on it with disdain afterwards, and to really stick the boot in, reported all the animators who had gone on strike as potential communists -- only the ringleaders were actually dragged before the House Un-American Activities Committee, but it still resulted in more than a few careers being put on hold, if not ended permanently.
** ''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. As for the voice cast in regards to the role of King Stefan, they replaced Hans Conried (who was working on this film when he was responsible for performing live action reference as King Stefan for animators to capture his expressions and movements for the character) with Taylor Holmes for no apparent reason, making it unknown who voiced Lord Duke. This caused the budget to balloon massively, and despite being second only to ''[[Film/BenHur1959 Ben-Hur]]'' at the 1959 box office because of it’s reissues, 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 until ''WesternAnimation/TheGreatMouseDetective'' helped save the studio. 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/RobinHood1973'' marked the start of a sustained period of troublesome productions that would last until well into the following decade. The story had a long and difficult gestation -- originally conceived as a modernized take on the story set in the southern U.S., director Wolfgang Reitherman and Disney's executives became concerned that such an adaptation would have limited appeal outside of North America, and retooled it into a more standard version of the story. This forced them to scrap virtually everything they had done until that point, putting the production well behind schedule. When animation finally did begin, Disney had fallen on financial troubles, forcing them to reycle a lot of animation from earlier films in their animated canon, most notably ''WesternAnimation/SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs'' and ''WesternAnimation/TheJungleBook''. Much resentment was also generated among the animators by Reitherman's inflexible attitude, which caused him to consistently refuse any suggestions that would have freshened up what they saw as an overly safe, stale take on the material. On top of all of that, the studio were unhappy with Tommy Steele's performance as the title character, leading to his being replaced by Brian Bedford. The film was a success at the box-office -- and was especially successful in Europe -- but was regarded by an OldShame by many of the animators who worked on it.
** ''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 Reitherman, 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''. 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 become one of the biggest box-office bombs in Disney history, not only making back less than half its budget, but nearly ''[[CreatorKiller killing Disney itself]]''. 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.
** ''WesternAnimation/OliverAndCompany'' had a troublesome start to production, firstly having its budget drastically reduced as a result of the spectacular failure of the aforementioned ''The Black Cauldron'', and then having one of its co-directors, Peter Young, die with the production barely a month old. Richard Rich was put on the project to replace Young, but busied himself feuding with the new Disney management rather than actually getting anything useful done, resulting in him being fired from the company altogether. Things smoothed out once the remaining co-director, George Scribner was allowed to take over as sole director, but a combination of a middling-at-best critical response, poor overseas performance, and it being released on the same day as ''WesternAnimation/TheLandBeforeTime'', meant it only barely broke even, and has since received little attention among the wider Disney canon. If nothing else, however, many future Disney and Pixar veterans managed to break into the industry by working on this movie, meaning that it did at least help lead to longer-term success for the company.

** ''WesternAnimation/{{The Lion King|1994}}'' first suffered from [[AndYouThoughtItWouldFail lack of internal faith]]; only up-and-coming animators or people who wanted to do animals picked up the project, with most going to work on ''WesternAnimation/{{Pocahontas}}'' instead. One of the directors, ''WesternAnimation/OliverAndCompany'' director George Scribner, who had even traveled with the other director Roger Allers and others to Africa for reference, left as he disagreed with turning the film into a musical while his intention was focusing on the natural aspects. The script was so bad that it needed a reworking with the help of the directors of ''WesternAnimation/BeautyAndTheBeast'' - and still was being fine-tuned during production, with completed scenes being reanimated due to dialogue changes. And just months before release, the Northridge earthquake hit Los Angeles, shutting off the studio and forcing animators to finish their work from home. Thankfully it was all worth it in the end.

** ''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/MeetTheRobinsons'': This film started under the guidance of Michael Eisner and David Stainton. They were both kicked out and replaced with John Lasseter, who asked for a reworking of about 60% of the film, hence why its release was held back a year.
** ''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/JohnLasseter and other [[Creator/PixarRegulars 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/{{Tangled}}'' took six years, a change in directors, a complete rehaul of the film's original FracturedFairyTale premise, and a cost of $260 million to see the light of day. It currently ranks as the sixth most expensive film in Hollywood history behind ''Film/PiratesOfTheCaribbeanOnStrangerTides'', ''Film/PiratesOfTheCaribbeanAtWorldsEnd'', ''Film/JusticeLeague2017'', ''Film/AvengersAgeOfUltron'' and ''Film/JohnCarter''. Happily for the future of [[WesternAnimation/Frozen2013 other Disney fairy tale adaptations]], it became Disney's biggest hit since ''WesternAnimation/{{The Lion King|1994}}''.
** ''WesternAnimation/WreckItRalph'' went through a number of problems along the way. Originally planned to have been screened before ''WesternAnimation/{{Tangled}}'', it had went through a number of cancelled and uncancelled calls along the way before finally getting the go-ahead. As well, the many video game companies ([[ValuesDissonance especially Japanese ones]]) had strict guidelines as to how their characters should act - Nintendo had guides as to how [[Franchise/SuperMarioBros Bowser]] should drink a cup of coffee, Sega had them reanimate a scene were [[VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog Sonic]] loses some rings because they said he could only lose rings if he were hit and the only reason Q*Bert got prominence in the movie was because Namco took offence at VideoGame/DigDug being depicted as destitute.
** ''WesternAnimation/{{Frozen|2013}}'' actually had a relatively easygoing production -- at least in terms of the people involved getting along with each other. The problem was instead the ''story''.
*** They spent several years changing the plot over and over. And then once production had gotten well underway, they were inspired by Idina Menzel's performance of "Let it Go" (which was written as a VillainSong accompanying a "ThenLetMeBeEvil" epiphany for Elsa, but turned out much more positive and uplifting than they intended even for what was meant to be a sympathetic TragicVillain) to re-write Elsa as a hero rather than a villain. Making sweeping changes to the plot to accommodate this new characterization, they were left with under ''fifteen months'' to finish the film.

** ''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 finally scrounged together enough for a new one.
** ''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 ''[[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]].
** Development on ''WesternAnimation/TheLandBeforeTime'' was an utter mess. With so many consultants, writers and directors working on-board, ExecutiveMeddling was inevitable. Upon closer analysis and the weird pacing/transitioning of scenes you appreciate the film's story was trying to pull in three directions: The Great Valley being the dinosaur's version of Heaven, which Don Bluth vehemently opposed as it would undermine ''All Dogs Go to Heaven'' (see below), not to mention Steven Spielberg and George Lucas' concerns the original scriptwriters plot would traumatize children. Don's original vision that Littlefoot's herd would encounter various inequalities and racism from other dinosaurs along their travels. Though this version has Littlefoot (and the viewer) find the Great Valley twice as to his horror realizes the Sharptooth has followed them right there, which Spielberg and Lucas felt diminished the film's climactic score and ending in finding the sanctuary. Despite all this, the film was a success.
** ''WesternAnimation/AllDogsGoToHeaven'' had a few significant snags. First, Bluth and co. repeatedly hit walls trying to get an adaptation of the original Beth Brown story to work, ultimately deciding to scrap it and come up with a different story based on the title alone. Then, Bluth butted egos with original producer Creator/StevenSpielberg over Spielberg always having final say in their collaborations, leading to Bluth eventually deciding to produce the film independently. And lastly was the murder of [[Creator/JudithBarsi their lead actress]] after she had recorded all of her lines, forcing certain violent aspects of the film to be toned down, such as Killer's tommy gun becoming a laser blaster. Bluth also took umbrage with leads Creator/BurtReynolds and Creator/DomDeLuise constantly ad libbing, but relented when he realized how much funnier their ad libs were than the script itself. Production was otherwise smooth and the film met its intended release date of November 17th 1989... when it was [[DuelingMovies promptly curb-stomped]] by ''WesternAnimation/{{The Little Mermaid|1989}}''.
** Then came several films which kicked off Bluth's notorious curse of ExecutiveMeddling. Starting with ''WesternAnimation/RockADoodle'', what few investors he had left forced him to tone down his trademark darkness in favor of a [[LighterAndSofter lighter, more marketable]] and, most importantly, [[FollowTheLeader Disney-esque]] style which completely contradicted his own philosophy of creating films which were dark, but had catharsis. Phil Harris's CaptainObvious narration was forced upon him at the last minute after test audiences, ironically, complained about certain things not making enough sense. It ended up bombing hard enough to close down Bluth's homegrown studio, taking the rights to all of his films with it.
** 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. In addition, original distributor MGM outright ''refused'' to release the film citing uncertainty about the company's financial stability; after initially attempting to sell the film to Disney (all the more ironic as the film borrows heavily from their Renaissance-era films, seemingly trying to invoke AllAnimationIsDisney- humorously, the film received ''higher'' reviews in test screenings when shown with their logo- and after the film was sold to Fox, the film would ultimately ''become'' theirs upon their acquisition of the company in 2019), the film would ultimately go to Warner Bros., where it would flop in the spring of 1994.
** 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 its release]].
** Late into the production of ''WesternAnimation/ThePebbleAndThePenguin'', Bluth had a falling out with Warner Bros. over the failure of his last two films, control of the project was [[ExecutiveMeddling seized by MGM/United Artists]] and everything went to hell: animation was farmed out for rushed completion, resulting in OffModel or outright incomplete shots being approved, fully animated scenes were cut and several voices had to be re-recorded. Bluth was [[CreatorBacklash furious with how badly the finished film looked]] that he and Gary Goldman outright [[ScrewThisImOutOfHere abandoned ship]], Bluth [[AlanSmithee taking his director credit with him]], to start up a new animation unit at 20th Century Fox. The first project, ''Westernanimation/{{Anastasia}}'', went well, but then...
** For his final film, ''WesternAnimation/TitanAE'', Bluth and Goldman were handed an already foundering project which had already blown through 18 other directors and $30 million on pre-production alone. The two were forced to scrap the whole thing and start over with a $55 million budget and less than two years to deliver. Much of the effects and post-production work were done ''two weeks'' before its release. Then, just before its premiere, Fox lost faith in the project, foresaw the rising trend of computer animation and closed down its barely six-year-old 2D animation unit. Bluth temporarily retired from animation shortly thereafter, publicly stating that he would "never draw another character and hand the rights over to someone else."
** And this isn't even taking into account all of his projects which were abruptly canceled during pre-production either from funding being withdrawn or new animation units getting shut down.
** Bluth and Goldman have since taken to crowd-funding a prequel film to their 1983 game ''VideoGame/DragonsLair'' in the hopes of making a proper comeback, after years in DevelopmentHell. As of this writing, production has been slow.

** The ''Franchise/ToyStory'' films have all been well-known for having this.
*** [[WesternAnimation/ToyStory1 The first film]] was subject to constant ExecutiveMeddling, with Disney pushing to make it [[DarkerAndEdgier more adult and cynical]]. This being their first feature, Pixar dutifully followed Disney's notes, even if they didn't agree with them. When a preview cut was declared unwatchable, Jeffrey Katzenberg, then-head of animation at Disney, asked with some concern why on earth Pixar had followed all the notes he and others had sent. Production was shut down for two weeks while Lasseter and the others basically rewrote the entire movie into pretty much what they wanted it to be in the first place. The movie would survive and be finished in time for release, although Katzenberg's job did not (he ended up quitting Disney a year before the movie's release to start up Creator/DreamWorks).
*** ''WesternAnimation/ToyStory2'' didn't have it any better. The project had started as a Direct-to-Video sequel 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, which was 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, however, 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, the backups they had of the movie in-house were corrupted. It looked like the movie was down the crapper, but it was thankfully 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/ToyStory3'' was stuck in DevelopmentHell for years, going through multiple scripts and directors. Also, when Pixar started animating the film, they thought they could save some time just using their old computer files of the main characters from the previous film. Unfortunately, they found out they had neglected to keep them updated with their current operating system and thus were inaccessible for use, so the animators had to remake the characters from scratch.
*** Even within a series notable for its production issues, ''WesternAnimation/ToyStory4'' had one of the longest and tumultuous production cycles in Pixar's history, only comparable to ''WesternAnimation/TheGoodDinosaur'' in terms of its production length and changes involved. It was slated to be directed by John Lasseter and Josh Cooley during its first four years of development, but a significant shakeup in production staff was announced in 2017 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. This resulted in the film's release date being pushed forward a year from its original Summer 2017 date. Lasseter 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 Creator/RashidaJones (partially responsible for bringing the misconduct allegations against Lasseter to light) and Will [=MacCormack=] left the film due to CreativeDifferences, resulting in a huge majority of the original screenplay (estimated to be '''80%''', according Bo Peep's voice actress Creator/AnniePotts) being thrown out and rewritten. These changes forced Pixar to delay the film an entire year to properly rewrite the story, swapping release dates with ''WesternAnimation/Incredibles2'' in the process. There was also the fate of Mr. Potato Head, whose voice actor Creator/DonRickles passed away before he could record his lines. Although Pixar considered writing the character out entirely, Rickles' estate told the team they would appreciaye Rickles in the film in a speaking capacity as a send-off to his character. They then had to go through decades of unused recordings of Rickles as Potato Head to construct a new performance for him.

** While ''WesternAnimation/{{Coonskin}}'' had a pretty smooth production (barring an incident where Bakshi had to fire three homophobic animators for picking on a gay artist), its release was another story. The film was incredibly controversial and led to multiple protests (one of which involved smoke bombing a theater showing the movie), often led by both Al Sharpton and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), both of whom had [[ComplainingAboutShowsYouDontWatch never even seen the movie]]. As a result, distributor Paramount dropped the film and handed it over to Bryanston Distributing Company, who ended up going bankrupt two weeks after the film's extremely limited release. Also, some of Music/BarryWhite's lines had to be rerecorded in order to remove "racist references and vulgarity."

*** During shooting, Bakshi wasn’t satisfied with cinematographer William A. Fraker when filming the live-action segments, so he decided to take the camera and shoot footage himself, which ended up pissing off Fraker so much that he quit and was replaced with a younger cameraman who had never shot a film in his life. Otherwise, shooting went smoothly.

** ''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 for budgetary reasons. While the finished film was a modest success, Bakshi was denied the greenlight to adapt the rest of the story (not helped by its overall lukewarm reception), 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''.

* 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, Imagi Animation Studios, went bankrupt a few months before opening; the film's subsequent box office failure would ensure the company's closure. The final product manages to show the chaotic production with its unevenness and lack of direction in terms of plot.
* ''WesternAnimation/BandsOnTheRun'', a movie based on Silly Bandz, was by all accounts a nightmare to make according to Jared Norby (the art director) who explained the film's production via [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTITDiZP1Pk&pbjreload=10 an email]] to [[WebVideo/RebelTaxi Pan Pizza]].
** 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 could [[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/Pikmin2'' 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.
** With four months left to go before the deadline, the team had to scramble to save the film by making it look at least presentable. The team had to build their own render farms, teach themselves how to animate CGI, and pull all-nighters in order to fix what they could. What certainly didn’t help was that half of the animation files were in Mandarin.

* ''Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank'' (formerly ''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 until it was announced in late January 2022 that Paramount Animation had bought the film and had immediately set a theatrical release date of July 22 for it (the film arguably serving as a slot replacement for their film ''Under The Boardwalk'', which was set to release around that time but was abruptly removed from Paramount's release schedule in a concurrent move).
* ''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.
* The [[UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfAnimation 1939]] Creator/FleischerStudios adaptation of ''WesternAnimation/GulliversTravels'' went through this. Many staffers, including animators Creator/ShamusCulhane and Creator/GrimNatwick, recall that the film had a lot of behind the scenes troubles that ended up hurting the quality:
** To begin with, it had a deadline that was far too short--production began in May 1938, and it was due Christmas 1939; this is less than half of the four years of production that went into ''WesternAnimation/SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs'', the film it was meant to emulate to begin with.
** The studio was clearly under equipped to take on the challenge of making a Disney-like feature length animated film--many of their staffers weren't familiar with the West Coast style of animation and techniques pioneered by Disney. The studio had to expand their staff considerably to even make the film possible, even managing to hire many ex-Disney animators, but this resulted in the East Coast and West Coast animators clashing with each other on their approaches to animation, and the studio's decision to hire amateur, apathetic Miami art students, as well as newcomers who received a few hours' worth of cram-course art training[[note]] contrast this to the years of extensive art training and schooling Disney and Don Graham pushed upon their artists[[/note]] resulted in sloppy inking and bad in-between work, which resulted in the film having [[OffModel very uneven animation quality]]. The Fleischers' move to a new studio in UsefulNotes/{{Miami}} also resulted in many of their talented employees in New York getting left behind (including WesternAnimation/BettyBoop voice actress Mae Questel), with the few who did make the move becoming homesick, as well as putting up with the hazards and quirks of UsefulNotes/{{Florida}} (such as many mosquito infestations).
** A feud between story artists over which direction the story would take--it was planned as a Music/BingCrosby vehicle at one point, and at one point ComicStrip/{{Popeye}} was intended to be the star of the film, with its tone being more cartoony, as Max Fleischer actually did not wish to follow the Disney approach to animated films. Both of the previous stories were thrown out and rewritten by West Coast storymen, particularly ex-Warners staffer Cal Howard.
** A feud between Max and Dave Fleischer themselves over whether Dave himself or another person would compose the film's score. Ultimately, outside composers were brought in while songs were contributed by the studios in-house musicians like Sammy Timberg.
** The fact that the film was being made in the Fleischers' new studio in Miami, Florida (which was far too small to hold the 700+ staffers needed to complete ''Gulliver'') meant that if any equipment broke down, it would have been very difficult to get it fixed in any reasonable time. The lack of film industry in Miami also meant that, unless they wanted to use local actors or their woefully inadequate amateur orchestra (which was impeding the sound quality of the shorts from mid-1938 onward), they had to outsource recording sessions to West Coast studios (which they did for ''Gulliver'', ''WesternAnimation/MrBugGoesToTown'', and the WesternAnimation/SupermanTheatricalCartoons).
** In the end, while the film did modestly well at the box office, Paramount deliberately discounted the money the film made in Europe before UsefulNotes/WorldWarII broke out there, meaning the film had much overhead left to be paid, leaving the Fleischers in the red. Critical reaction was also mixed, with a cruel remark from rival Creator/WaltDisney quipping "We can make a better film than that with our second-string animators".
* ''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.
* The Croatian animated feature ''Animation/LapitchTheLittleShoemaker'' took ''7 years'' to make, with the first 5 being while the Croatian War of Independence was ongoing, and the animators were forced to use cel cameras dating as far back as 1938. It was also produced at a time when the country was facing a slump in its animation industry. [[SubvertedTrope However]], it became Croatia's most successful animated production and was Croatia's official selection for the 1997 Academy Awards (in the Best Foreign Language Film category) and soon afterwards German companies [=HaffaDiebold=] and [=ProSiebenSat=].1 Media took interest in the film and funded a {{Recut}} for foreign markets, which was even more successful.
* Riding high on the success of ''Franchise/HelloKitty'', Creator/{{Sanrio}} greenlit ''Metamorphoses'', a ''WesternAnimation/{{Fantasia}}''-inspired movie based on [[Literature/TheMetamorphoses the stories by]] Creator/{{Ovid}}. Unfortunately, the film ended up being a disaster not only with critics and audiences, but behind the scenes as well.
** Sanrio started ''Metamorphoses'' part of their expansion into animated films for both Japanese and American audiences; in particular, this project was animated primarily in the United States with a crew consisting of several veteran animators, including director Takashi Matsunaga, working under the mononym Takashi. Problems arose as the American animators hired to work on the project started to raise concerns about there being too many pointless and/or random scenes that didn't even match the music being done for it, complaints that fell on deaf ears, not helped by Takashi (suspected by a few of the animators to have been chosen solely because he was born in Japan) being in over his head and refusing to admit it.
** When the movie was released in New York City and Los Angeles by Creator/ColumbiaPictures in 1978, critics slammed it for its confusing RandomEventsPlot and for being pretentious and boring in general. which wasn't helped by at least one LA screening where the volume was set so high that, combined with the pop rock score, the soundtrack played loud enough to drive people out of the theater, and even leading to rumors that it made the plaster fall off the ceiling.
** After that brief, disastrous run, the film was re-edited to make the film more coherent. In addition to rearranging the scenes trimming seven minutes from its runtime, Creator/PeterUstinov was brough in to serve as a LemonyNarrator [[FillingTheSilence for the previously dialogue-free film]]. The rock soundtrack with replaced with a disco score by Alex Costandinos. Renamed ''Winds of Change'' and released the following year, it ultimately didn't fare much better - though it did eventually make it to home video, which can't be said of the original cut, which hasn't been seen at all since its short-lived original run.
* ''WesternAnimation/QuestForCamelot'': The film went through numerous changes that led to its Disneyfication. Both Creator/LaurenFaust and a handful of other animators who worked on it have unkind memories of this film, full of stubborn executives and a script they hated.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheIronGiant'': As described in the documentary, ''A Giant's Dream,'' and on This Wiki/ThisVeryWiki: an extremely short turnaround time, a crew consisting mostly of first-time feature film artists, and an apathetic studio who waited too long to decide whether or not to advertise it.
* Creator/JoeDante described the production of ''Film/LooneyTunesBackInAction" as "a nightmarish year and a half of my life that I'll never get back", and an experience he wasn't eager to repeat. Hoo boy:
** Dante's biggest headache came from Creator/WarnerBros Feature Animation, the studio division which handled animated films at the time. Warner Bros., which like other studios was eager to ride the coattails of the 1990s Disney Renaissance, had no conception on how to actually produce animation, and slapped together animation teams without understanding the effort their work took or having any infrastructure in place. The studio rushed films into production before they were properly prepped, truncated their schedules, and engaged in top-heavy micromanagement, leading to high turnover rates and scripts being repeatedly retooled. As a result, of the six animated flicks Warner Bros. Feature Animation put out in its fourteen year existence, five were [[BoxOfficeBomb Box Office Bombs]].
** 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'' wouldn't get a true sequel until ''[[Film/SpaceJamANewLegacy A New Legacy]]'' twenty-four years later.)

** 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 projects. Originally set for release in July 2003, it was abruptly moved to November, claiming ''Finding Nemo'' was hogging the family audience around that time. 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.
** 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.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheRoadToElDorado'': The film's director, Will Finn, said that the film's production was an absolute bloodbath and that he still has nightmares about it to this day, and he has nothing but grim memories about it whenever it's brought up. It was bad enough that he resigned from Dreamworks to return back to Disney later in its production. He likened the turbulent making of it to being akin to a mashup of ''Film/MutinyOnTheBounty'' and ''Film/TheProducers''.
* ''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.]]

** 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, and even Sony, the distributor of the film, rejected it until Rogen re-sent the script to them a couple of years later. For comparison, Seth had no problem pitching ''Film/TheInterview'' to Sony despite that film's heavy themes.
** Once things started rolling, the problems only continued. Director Greg Tiernan forced the animators at Nitrogen Studios to work overtime 7 days a week without extra pay thanks to the film's low budget, and any animators who stood up against Tiernan's tyranny would be fired and blackballed from the company along with going uncredited in the movie (reportedly, only ''half'' of the animators who worked on the film were credited). Sadly, Greg got away with these actions because there is no animation union in Vancouver (where Nitrogen is located), meaning that he could do as he pleased with his employees, who had nowhere to turn to.[[note]] Three years after production ended, the animators sued for their unpaid overtime and won, so there is that little victory.[[/note]]

* According to the animators who worked on it, ''WesternAnimation/SirBilli'' 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/TheIllusionist2010'', 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.
* Socialist Hungary's ''Animation/SonOfTheWhiteHorse'' 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.
* ''Animation/TheTragedyOfMan'', a highly ambitious and faithful retelling of a 1800s Hungarian theatrical play of the same name, started production in 1983, and the animating process began in 1988. A couple years later, the Soviet Union collapsed, taking Hungary's former studio system with it, along with shoving the country's already waning animation industry further downhill. Without state-sponsored backing, what was initially envisioned as a 6 year project only landed in theaters ''23 years later'' in 2011. And the time frame was indeed correct, [[ExactWords the animation did take about 6 years to complete]]; the rest of that time was spent on trying to raise funds to ''release it''. Each of the film's 15 acts, all done in their own distinct art and animation style, were completed out of order and showcased at various film festivals to get funding. Most of the voice actors had to be replaced as the originals got too old for their roles. In the end, director Marcell Jankovics licencing his older animated short ''Sisyphus'' for a GM car commercial gave him a financial boost, and he was happy the movie got finished at all.
* Much of why ''WesternAnimation/WereBackADinosaursStory'' was a critical and commercial failure could be blamed on its [[https://web.archive.org/web/20181201002007/https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/roll-back-the-rock-an-oral-history-of-were-back-a-dinosaurs-story-for-its-25th-birthday hectic production]]. Right off the bat, the producers were stuck with the difficult task of turning a 20-page picture book with no real plot or antagonist into a feature-length movie, and the original author, Hudson Talbott, had little input over its production, which wasn't helped by the film being [[ChristmasRushed rushed into and through production]] to coincide with the release of ''Film/JurassicPark'' earlier that year. The result was a number of rewrites, a ton of ExecutiveMeddling, directors rotating in and out of the project (with Phil Nibbelink ultimately handling more of the work than anyone else), and thousands of dollars wasted on casting Creator/JohnMalkovich, then Creator/ChristopherLloyd to voice Professor Screweyes, only for both to be rejected by Steven Spielberg; the role ultimately went to Creator/KennethMars. Then, just as production was wrapping up, $1 million of edits, including the addition of the parade sequence, was put into production after a disastrous test screening. The misfortune even extended to the marketing: Creator/{{Universal}} got a Rex balloon into the UsefulNotes/MacysThanksgivingDayParade, only for it to hit a lamp post, popping his head and prompting NBC to run footage of a test flight in place of the effectively decapitated balloon.
* ''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 ultimately became a catch-22 for Paramount: because Feiss directed very little of the movie, they would still have to give credit to Brown... but they didn't ''want'' to give attention to Brown after his sordid history just came out (especially after Jeffrey Tambor, who played Boomer, ended up recast after the same type of misconduct-exposing that hit Brown hit him as well). As a result, Paramount decided to credit ''no one'' as director (not even in an AlanSmithee fashion), making it an extremely rare film that does not have any credited director.

Animation is not cheap and [[AnimationLeadTime takes long to finish]]. If it's feature length, it can get even worse, as all these animated {{Troubled Production}}s below show.

Animation is not cheap and [[AnimationLeadTime takes long to finish]]. If it's feature length, it can get even worse, as all those animated {{Troubled Production}}s below show.

Animation is not cheap and [[AnimationLeadTime takes long to finish]]. If it's feature length it can get even worse, as all those animated {{Troubled Production}}s below show.

* Creator/{{Disney}} and Creator/{{Pixar}} have been notorious for having multiple movies that went through this. Some of them went on to become their finest works, while others [[OldShame they would much rather forget]]. Moreover, during the reign of Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg, it was even ''chronic'':

** ''WesternAnimation/TheBlackCauldron''. 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 become one of the biggest box-office bombs in Disney history, not only making back less than half its budget, but nearly ''[[CreatorKiller killing Disney itself]]''. 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.

** ''WesternAnimation/{{The Little Mermaid|1989}}'': Because of how labor intensive it would have been, Disney sent the animation of the bubbles to a [[Creator/PacificRimAnimation Chinese-based facility]], which just so happened to be located near Tiananmen Square ''just'' as the Beijing student uprising occurred. Everything ultimately went according to plan, but the labor was what convinced the studio to make the full transition to Creator/{{Pixar}}'s CAPS digital ink-and-paint for future films.
** ''WesternAnimation/BeautyAndTheBeast'': The animators were given no vacation time during the film's production in order for everything to be absolutely flawless, partially owing to Jeff Katzenberg's admitted impatience with the medium. Several of the artists' marriages were broken up as a result; some artists even claimed to buying new clothing on their break time because they couldn't go home to do laundry, and plenty more up and quit. The grueling work clearly shows, but Katzenberg decided not to do this again when he saw how miserable his staff was as a result.
** ''WesternAnimation/{{The Lion King|1994}}'' first suffered from [[AndYouThoughtItWouldFail lack of internal faith]] - only up-and-coming animators or people who wanted to do animals picked up the project, with most going to work on ''WesternAnimation/{{Pocahontas}}'' instead. One of the directors, ''WesternAnimation/OliverAndCompany'' director George Scribner, who had even traveled with the other director Roger Allers and other people to Africa for reference, left as he disagreed on turning the film into a musical while his intention was focusing on the natural aspects. The script was so bad that it needed a reworking with the help of the directors of ''WesternAnimation/BeautyAndTheBeast'' - and still was being fine-tuned during production, with completed scenes being reanimated due to dialogue changes. And just months before release, the Northridge earthquake hit Los Angeles, shutting off the studio and forcing animators to finish their work from home. Thankfully it was all worth it in the end.

** The ''Franchise/ToyStory'' films have all been well known for having this.
*** [[WesternAnimation/ToyStory1 The first film]] was subject to constant ExecutiveMeddling, pushing to make it [[DarkerAndEdgier more adult and cynical]]. Pixar, this being their first feature, dutifully followed the notes from the executives, even if they didn't agree with them. When a preview cut was declared unwatchable, Jeffrey Katzenberg, then head of animation at Disney, asked with some concern why on earth Pixar had followed all the notes he and others had sent. Production was shut down for two weeks, while Lasseter and the others basically rewrote the entire movie, into pretty much what they wanted in the first place. The movie would survive and get finished in time for release, though Katzenberg's job did not (he ended up quitting Disney a year before the movie's release to start up Creator/DreamWorks).
*** ''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, 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/ToyStory3'' was stuck in DevelopmentHell for years, going through multiple scripts and directors. Also, when Pixar started animating the film, they thought they could save some time just using their old computer files of the main characters from the previous film. Unfortunately, when they tried, they found out that they neglected to keep them updated with their current operating system and thus were inaccessible for use, and the animators had to remake the characters from scratch.
*** ''WesternAnimation/ToyStory4'', even within a series notable for its production issues, had one of the longest and tumultuous production cycles in Pixar's history, only comparable to ''WesternAnimation/TheGoodDinosaur'' in terms of its production length and changes involved. It was slated to be co-directed with John Lasseter and Josh Cooley during its first four years of development, but a significant shakeup in production staff was announced in 2017 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. This resulted in the film's release date being pushed forward a year from its original Summer 2017 date. 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 Creator/RashidaJones (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's voice actress Creator/AnniePotts) being thrown out and rewritten. These changes forced Pixar to delay the film an entire year to properly rewrite the story, swapping release dates with ''WesternAnimation/Incredibles2'' in the process. There was also the fate of Mr. Potato Head, whose voice actor Creator/DonRickles passed away before he could record his lines. Thought Pixar considered writing the character out entirely, Rickles' estate told the team they would love to have Rickles in the film in a speaking capacity as a send-off to his character. They then had to go through decades of unused recordings of Rickles as Potato Head to construct a new performance for him.
** ''WesternAnimation/{{Ratatouille}}'' was originally developed in 2001 by Jan Pinkava, but Pixar lost faith in Pinkava and ultimately replaced him with Creator/BradBird.

** The unique concept of ''WesternAnimation/InsideOut'' meant twice as much time spent on development. Production design alone lasted five years, the longest for designer Ralph Eggelston, and the emotions' distinct "grainy" surface texture was almost dropped because it was too difficult and expensive for just ''one'' character, let alone five. Towards the end of it, Pete Docter was seconds away from a nervous breakdown and quitting. But like many troubled Disney/Pixar productions, it was all worth it in the end, as ''Inside Out'' was heralded as Pixar's return to form, and, according to several critics, their new gold standard for movies.
** ''WesternAnimation/TheGoodDinosaur'' was originally scheduled to be released in June 2014, but plot troubles caused its director and producer to be replaced, the original script and recorded dialogue scrapped, and the entire cast replaced. The film's release date was pushed back to November 2015, however a huge lack of interest for another Pixar film as well as the promotion not being strong enough caused it to become the first full-on BoxOfficeBomb in Pixar's history.

* Creator/RalphBakshi, over the course of his career, has had several films that weren't easy to make, not helped by the fact that his works have very adult themes and imagery, and were made in a time when animation was seen as strictly for children.

*** 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]].
*** Multiple animators were either fired or quit mid-production, either for political reasons (some refused to draw exposed breasts, and one didn't want to draw a black crow shooting a pig cop), or vulgar reasons (such as those who only joined to draw sleazy animal pornography). Veteran animator Ted Bonnicksen ended up dying from leukemia during production. When Bakshi relocated his studio to Los Angeles, he was greeted with both praise and hate from various animators, with the latter camp even posting unwelcoming ads about him in ''The Hollywood Reporter''.
** ''WesternAnimation/HeavyTraffic'' marked the last time Bakshi would work with Krantz due to the latter's extreme ExecutiveMeddling and off-the-wall antics. During the middle of production, Bakshi realized that he was never paid for his work on ''Fritz'', with Krantz claiming to him that "The picture didn't make money" ([[BlatantLies even though Krantz had just purchased a new BMW and a mansion in Beverly Hills]] after the smash box office success of ''Fritz''). Krantz would also issue memos requesting various changes to the movie, such as censoring/deleting several sex scenes. When Bakshi refused to talk about his next movie ''Harlem Nights'' with Krantz, the producer locked Bakshi out of the studio, wire-tapped his phone, and even fired him from his own movie, calling several directors to replace him, and only rehired Bakshi when co-producer Samuel Z. Arkoff threatened to pull funding from the film; all because Krantz was becoming paranoid about Bakshi's loyalty towards him as an employee.
** While ''WesternAnimation/{{Coonskin}}'' had a pretty smooth production (barring an incident where Bakshi had to fire three homophobic animators for picking on a gay artist), its release was another story. The film was incredibly controversial, and led to multiple protests, one of which involved smoke bombing a theater showing the movie, often led by both Al Sharpton and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), both of whom had [[ComplainingAboutShowsYouDontWatch never even seen the movie]]. As a result of all the controversy, distributor Paramount dropped the film, instead handing it over to Bryanston Distributing Company, who ended up going bankrupt two weeks after the film's extremely limited release. Also, some of Music/BarryWhite's lines had to be rerecorded in order to remove "racist references and vulgarity."

*** Wanting to make a film that had [[RogerRabbitEffect a mixture of both live-action and animation]], Bakshi hired various African American animators and graffiti artists to help with the film’s urban aesthetic. Unfortunately, due to the controversy over ''Coonskin'', a lot of them left production out of embarrassment.
*** During shooting, Bakshi wasn’t satisfied with cinematographer William A. Fraker when filming the live-action segments, so he decided to take the camera and shoot footage himself, which ended up pissing off Fraker so much, he quit the project and was replaced with a younger cameraman who had never shot a film in his life. Otherwise, shooting went smoothly.

*** With the film being completed in 1975, it was set for a 1976 release before being [[TheShelfOfMovieLanguishment postponed indefinitely]]. While this was due to fears from Creator/WarnerBros that the backlash from ''Coonskin'' would prevent people from seeing the movie, it was also because the executives thought that [[ItWillNeverCatchOn a movie with a combination of live-action and animation would be “unreleasable”]], refusing to put more money into the project, with Bakshi spending numerous years taking on [[WesternAnimation/TheLordOfTheRings various]] projects in order to fund the movie himself.
*** Bakshi was almost sued by WB president Frank Wells due to the former having used too much live-action footage, which went against contract. As a result, the majority of the live-action footage was cut, with some scenes instead rotoscoped.
*** The second cut of the film was finally released in 1982 to select markets, where it received mixed critical reception and did little business at the box office. While the film would receive a cult following through cable airings and DVD (one of its fans being Creator/QuentinTarantino), Bakshi himself [[CreatorBacklash disowned the movie]] (instead having more positive things to say about his original 1975 cut).
** ''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. While the finished film was a modest success, Bakshi was denied the greenlight to adapt the rest of the story (not helped by its overall lukewarm reception), 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''.

* Famed animator Creator/RichardWilliams had two films during his time in the industry that have proved absolute headaches to make.
** ''WesternAnimation/RaggedyAnnAndAndyAMusicalAdventure'' was produced by a team of Broadway producers who'd never worked on a film, let alone animation, making it difficult for them to know what they wanted. The crew eventually assembled consisted mostly of recent art school graduates and veterans of theatrical shorts who'd never worked on a feature, including director Creator/RichardWilliams himself, meaning that everyone was at different levels of experience and ability. Williams, who [[PrimadonnaDirector could not work for a budget]], balked at the initial proposition for [[LimitedAnimation UPA-style animation]] and insisted that, to get the storybook quality visuals he desired, he would need to have two fully operational units on either coast. This ambitious technique, plus the cost to fly Willaims back and forth between the two to supervise and for animators to mail their scenes to the New York studio, caused the once-minuscule budget to skyrocket, slowed the production down resulting in several missed deadlines. It confused the animators, with one unit sometimes completing a scene the same day it had been assigned to the other unit. Emery Hawkins, who animated [[SignatureScene the infamous "Greedy sequence,"]] got fed up and [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere quit halfway through]] reanimating the scene for the second time, forcing two assistants to finish it for him. When the studio told Williams that there was no money left to give the film his trademark ArtisticTitle, he cursed them out and animated it himself. Williams was eventually [[ExecutiveMeddling fired and replaced]] at the tail end of production simply to get it finished.
** ''WesternAnimation/TheThiefAndTheCobbler'', as documented in 2012's ''Persistence of Vision'', is one of the most infamous examples in animation history.:
*** Williams, having illustrated Idries Shah's books about the Middle Eastern folk hero and [[TheTrickster wise fool]] Mullah Nasruddin, set out to adapt the stories into an animated film. Shah and his family sponsored the film, with Shah's brother Omar as the producer, and it formally began production in 1964. By 1972, Williams and his studio had produced three hours of footage which needed to be structured into a cohesive movie. He soon realized the Shah family wasn't keeping track of the film's finances and accused Omar of embezzling him. Williams lost the rights to the film in the resulting legal kurfuffle, but he was allowed to keep his original character designs, most notably a thief, around whom a new story was written around.
*** The new film began production in 1973. The original ''Nasruddin'' film and its successor had protracted productions due to Williams's incessant perfectionist attitude and constant story revisions that led to dozens of missed deadlines, rewrites, and redone animation. Williams took any job he could (including the aforementioned ''Raggedy Ann and Andy'') to fund it.
*** The project got moving when 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}} to cash in on Disney's ''WesternAnimation/{{Aladdin}}''. It was re-edited further in its 1995 US release by Miramax, who retitled it ''Arabian Knight''.
*** 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/WreckItRalph'' went through a number of problems along the way. Originally planned to have been screened before ''WesternAnimation/{{Tangled}}'', it had went through a number of cancelled and uncancelled calls along the way before finally getting the go-ahead. As well, the many video game companies ([[ValuesDissonance especially Japanese ones]]) had strict guidelines as to how their characters should act - Nintendo had guides as to how [[Franchise/SuperMarioBros Bowser]] should drink a cup of coffee, Sega had them reanimate a scene were [[VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog Sonic]] loses some rings because they said he could only lose rings if he were hit and the only reason Q*Bert got prominence in the movie was because Namco took offence at VideoGame/DigDug being the target.

* According to the animators who worked on it, ''WesternAnimation/SirBilli'' 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/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/BenHur1959 Ben-Hur]]'' 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.

* The Croatian animated feature ''Lapitch the Little Shoemaker'' took ''7 years'' to make, with the first 5 being while the Croatian War of Independence was ongoing, and the animators were forced to use cel cameras dating as far back as 1938. It was also produced at a time when the country was facing a slump in its animation industry. [[SubvertedTrope However]], it became Croatia's most successful animated production and was Croatia's official selection for the 1997 Academy Awards (in the Best Foreign Language Film category) and soon afterwards German companies [=HaffaDiebold=] and [=ProSiebenSat=].1 Media took interest in the film and funded a {{Recut}} for foreign markets, which was even more successful.

** ''WesternAnimation/MeetTheRobinsons'': This film started under the guidance of Michael Eisner and David Stainton. They they were both kicked out and replaced with John Lasseter, who asked for a reworking of about 60% of the film, hence why its release was held back a year.

** With four months left to go before the deadline, the team had to scramble to save the film by making it look at least presentable. The team had to build their own render farms, taught themselves how to animate CGI, and pull all-nighters in order to fix what they could. What certainly didn’t help was that half of the animation files were in Mandarin.

* The Croatian animated feature ''Lapitch the Little Shoemaker'' took ''7 years'' to make, with the first 5 being while the Croatian War of Independence was ongoing, and the animators were forced to use cel cameras dating as far back as 1938. It was also produced at a time when the country was facing a slump in it's animation industry. [[SubvertedTrope However]], it became Croatia's most successful animated production and was Croatia's official selection for the 1997 Academy Awards (in the Best Foreign Language Film category) and soon afterwards German companies [=HaffaDiebold=] and [=ProSiebenSat=].1 Media took interest in the film and funded a {{Recut}} for foreign markets, which was even more successful.

Animated movies with {{Troubled Production}}s.

*** Williams, having illustrated Idries Shah's books about the Middle Eastern folk hero and [[TheTrickster wise fool]] Mullah Nasruddin, set out to adapt the stories into an animated film. Shah and his family sponsored the film, which formally began production in 1964. By 1972, Williams and his studio had produced three hours of footage which needed to be structured into a cohesive movie. He soon realized the Shah family wasn't keeping track of the film's finances and accused producer Omar Shah of embezzlement. The resulting legal kerfluffle stripped the film away from Williams, but he was allowed to keep his original character designs, most notably a thief, around whom a new story was written around.

*** Williams, having illustrated Idries Shah's books about the wise fool Mullah Nasruddin, set out to adapt the stories into an animated film. Shah and his family sponsored the film, which formally began production in 1964. By 1972, Williams and his studio had produced three hours of footage which needed to be structured into a cohesive movie. He soon realized the Shah family wasn't keeping track of the film's finances and accused producer Omar Shah of embezzlement. The resulting legal kerfluffle stripped the film away from Williams, but he was allowed to keep his original character designs, most notably a thief, around whom a new story was written around.

*** The project gained some steam when 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}} to cash in on Disney's ''WesternAnimation/{{Aladdin}}''. It was re-edited further in its 1995 US release by Miramax, who retitled it ''Arabian Knight''.

*** The new film began production in 1973. The original ''Nasruddin'' film and its successor had protracted productions due to incessant perfectionist attitude and constant story revisions that led to dozens of missed deadlines, rewrites, and redone animation. Williams took any job he could (including the aforementioned ''Raggedy Ann and Andy'') to fund it.

** Williams, having illustrated Idries Shah's books about the wise fool Mullah Nasruddin, set out to adapt the stories into an animated film. Shah and his family sponsored the film, which formally began production in 1964. By 1972, Williams and his studio had produced three hours of footage which needed to be structured into a cohesive movie. He soon realized the Shah family wasn't keeping track of the film's finances and accused producer Omar Shah of embezzlement. The resulting legal kerfluffle stripped the film away from Williams, but he was allowed to keep his original character designs, most notably a thief, around whom a new story was written around.
** The new film began production in 1973. The original ''Nasruddin'' film and its successor had protracted productions due to incessant perfectionist attitude and constant story revisions that led to dozens of missed deadlines, rewrites, and redone animation. Williams took any job he could (including the aforementioned ''Raggedy Ann and Andy'') to fund it.
** The project gained some steam when 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}} to cash in on Disney's ''WesternAnimation/{{Aladdin}}''. It was re-edited further in its 1995 US release by Miramax, who retitled it ''Arabian Knight''.
** 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/TheThiefAndTheCobbler'', as documented in 2012's ''Persistence of Vision'', is one of the most infamous examples in animation history. 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.

[[folder: Richard Williams]]
* Famed animator Creator/RichardWilliams had two films during his time in the industry that have proved absolute headaches to make.
** ''WesternAnimation/RaggedyAnnAndAndyAMusicalAdventure'' was produced by a team of Broadway producers who'd never worked on a film, let alone animation, making it difficult for them to know what they wanted. The crew eventually assembled consisted mostly of recent art school graduates and veterans of theatrical shorts who'd never worked on a feature, including director Creator/RichardWilliams himself, meaning that everyone was at different levels of experience and ability. Williams, who [[PrimadonnaDirector could not work for a budget]], balked at the initial proposition for [[LimitedAnimation UPA-style animation]] and insisted that, to get the storybook quality visuals he desired, he would need to have two fully operational units on either coast. This ambitious technique, plus the cost to fly Willaims back and forth between the two to supervise and for animators to mail their scenes to the New York studio, caused the once-minuscule budget to skyrocket, slowed the production down resulting in several missed deadlines. It confused the animators, with one unit sometimes completing a scene the same day it had been assigned to the other unit. Emery Hawkins, who animated [[SignatureScene the infamous "Greedy sequence,"]] got fed up and [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere quit halfway through]] reanimating the scene for the second time, forcing two assistants to finish it for him. When the studio told Williams that there was no money left to give the film his trademark ArtisticTitle, he cursed them out and animated it himself. Williams was eventually [[ExecutiveMeddling fired and replaced]] at the tail end of production simply to get it finished.
** ''WesternAnimation/TheThiefAndTheCobbler'', as documented in 2012's ''Persistence of Vision'', is one of the most infamous examples in animation history. 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.
[[/folder]]

* 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, Imagi Animation Studios, went bankrupt a few months before opening; the film's subsequent box office failure would ensure the company's closure. The final product manages to show the chaotic production with its unevenness and lack of direction in terms of plot.

* 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, Imagi Animation Studios, went bankrupt a few months before opening; the film's subsequent box office failure would ensure the company's closure. The final product manages to show the chaotic production with its unevenness and lack of direction in terms of plot.
* Creator/RalphBakshi, over the course of his career, has had several films that weren't easy to make, not helped by the fact that his works have very adult themes and imagery, and were made in a time when animation was seen as strictly for children.
** ''WesternAnimation/FritzTheCat'' had a whale of a time getting made, mainly due to Creator/RobertCrumb's hatred for the project, and Bakshi's then-inexperience at directing a feature-length animated movie:
*** 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]].
*** Multiple animators were either fired or quit mid-production, either for political reasons (some refused to draw exposed breasts, and one didn't want to draw a black crow shooting a pig cop), or vulgar reasons (such as those who only joined to draw sleazy animal pornography). Veteran animator Ted Bonnicksen ended up dying from leukemia during production. When Bakshi relocated his studio to Los Angeles, he was greeted with both praise and hate from various animators, with the latter camp even posting unwelcoming ads about him in ''The Hollywood Reporter''.
** ''WesternAnimation/HeavyTraffic'' marked the last time Bakshi would work with Krantz due to the latter's extreme ExecutiveMeddling and off-the-wall antics. During the middle of production, Bakshi realized that he was never paid for his work on ''Fritz'', with Krantz claiming to him that "The picture didn't make money" ([[BlatantLies even though Krantz had just purchased a new BMW and a mansion in Beverly Hills]] after the smash box office success of ''Fritz''). Krantz would also issue memos requesting various changes to the movie, such as censoring/deleting several sex scenes. When Bakshi refused to talk about his next movie ''Harlem Nights'' with Krantz, the producer locked Bakshi out of the studio, wire-tapped his phone, and even fired him from his own movie, calling several directors to replace him, and only rehired Bakshi when co-producer Samuel Z. Arkoff threatened to pull funding from the film; all because Krantz was becoming paranoid about Bakshi's loyalty towards him as an employee.
** While ''WesternAnimation/{{Coonskin}}'' had a pretty smooth production (barring an incident where Bakshi had to fire three homophobic animators for picking on a gay artist), its release was another story. The film was incredibly controversial, and led to multiple protests, one of which involved smoke bombing a theater showing the movie, often led by both Al Sharpton and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), both of whom had [[ComplainingAboutShowsYouDontWatch never even seen the movie]]. As a result of all the controversy, distributor Paramount dropped the film, instead handing it over to Bryanston Distributing Company, who ended up going bankrupt two weeks after the film's extremely limited release. Also, some of Music/BarryWhite's lines had to be rerecorded in order to remove "racist references and vulgarity."
** ''WesternAnimation/HeyGoodLookin'' was one of Bakshi's most exhausting productions yet:
*** Wanting to make a film that had [[RogerRabbitEffect a mixture of both live-action and animation]], Bakshi hired various African American animators and graffiti artists to help with the film’s urban aesthetic. Unfortunately, due to the controversy over ''Coonskin'', a lot of them left production out of embarrassment.
*** During shooting, Bakshi wasn’t satisfied with cinematographer William A. Fraker when filming the live-action segments, so he decided to take the camera and shoot footage himself, which ended up pissing off Fraker so much, he quit the project and was replaced with a younger cameraman who had never shot a film in his life. Otherwise, shooting went smoothly.
*** During post-production, Bakshi found that the cost of the optical effect required to complete live-action scenes with animated characters was larger than the film's given budget. In order to complete these scenes cost effectively, Bakshi and his cameraman Ted C. Bemiller purchased a 35 mm camera to project the footage onto the glass under the animation camera, which was reflected onto where the animation was shot.
*** With the film being completed in 1975, it was set for a 1976 release before being [[TheShelfOfMovieLanguishment postponed indefinitely]]. While this was due to fears from Creator/WarnerBros that the backlash from ''Coonskin'' would prevent people from seeing the movie, it was also because the executives thought that [[ItWillNeverCatchOn a movie with a combination of live-action and animation would be “unreleasable”]], refusing to put more money into the project, with Bakshi spending numerous years taking on [[WesternAnimation/TheLordOfTheRings various]] projects in order to fund the movie himself.
*** Bakshi was almost sued by WB president Frank Wells due to the former having used too much live-action footage, which went against contract. As a result, the majority of the live-action footage was cut, with some scenes instead rotoscoped.
*** The second cut of the film was finally released in 1982 to select markets, where it received mixed critical reception and did little business at the box office. While the film would receive a cult following through cable airings and DVD (one of its fans being Creator/QuentinTarantino), Bakshi himself [[CreatorBacklash disowned the movie]] (instead having more positive things to say about his original 1975 cut).
** ''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. While the finished film was a modest success, Bakshi was denied the greenlight to adapt the rest of the story (not helped by its overall lukewarm reception), 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/BandsOnTheRun'', a movie based on Silly Bandz, was by all accounts a nightmare to make according to Jared Norby (the art director) who explained the film's production via [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTITDiZP1Pk&pbjreload=10 an email]] to [[WebVideo/RebelTaxi Pan Pizza]].
** 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 could [[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/Pikmin2'' 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.
** With four months left to go before the deadline, the team had to scramble to save the film by making it look at least presentable. The team had to build their own render farms, taught themselves how to animate CGI, and pull all-nighters in order to fix what they could. What certainly didn’t help was that half of the animation files were in Mandarin.
** The movie ended up being both the first and [[CreatorKiller last film]] to come from Elastic Productions, as they shut down immediately after. The movie ended up selling poorly thanks to coming out in 2011, right after Silly Bandz vanished from the market and were forgotten about.
* ''Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank'' (formerly ''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 until it was announced in late January 2022 that Paramount Animation had bought the film and had immediately set a theatrical release date of July 22 for it (the film arguably serving as a slot replacement for their film ''Under The Boardwalk'', which was set to release around that time but was abruptly removed from Paramount's release schedule in a concurrent move).
* '''Every single film''' made by Creator/DonBluth, enough to force him into retirement in 2000.
** ''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 finally scrounged together enough for a new one.
** ''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 ''[[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]].
** Development on ''WesternAnimation/TheLandBeforeTime'' was an utter mess. With so many consultants, writers and directors working on-board, ExecutiveMeddling was inevitable. Upon closer analysis and the weird pacing/transitioning of scenes you appreciate the film's story was trying to pull in three directions: The Great Valley being the dinosaur's version of Heaven, which Don Bluth vehemently opposed as it would undermine ''All Dogs Go to Heaven'' (see below), not to mention Steven Spielberg and George Lucas' concerns the original scriptwriters plot would traumatize children. Don's original vision that Littlefoot's herd would encounter various inequalities and racism from other dinosaurs along their travels. Though this version has Littlefoot (and the viewer) find the Great Valley twice as to his horror realizes the Sharptooth has followed them right there, which Spielberg and Lucas felt diminished the film's climactic score and ending in finding the sanctuary. Despite all this, the film was a success.
** ''WesternAnimation/AllDogsGoToHeaven'' had a few significant snags. First, Bluth and co. repeatedly hit walls trying to get an adaptation of the original Beth Brown story to work, ultimately deciding to scrap it and come up with a different story based on the title alone. Then, Bluth butted egos with original producer Creator/StevenSpielberg over Spielberg always having final say in their collaborations, leading to Bluth eventually deciding to produce the film independently. And lastly was the murder of [[Creator/JudithBarsi their lead actress]] after she had recorded all of her lines, forcing certain violent aspects of the film to be toned down, such as Killer's tommy gun becoming a laser blaster. Bluth also took umbrage with leads Creator/BurtReynolds and Creator/DomDeLuise constantly ad libbing, but relented when he realized how much funnier their ad libs were than the script itself. Production was otherwise smooth and the film met its intended release date of November 17th 1989... when it was [[DuelingMovies promptly curb-stomped]] by ''WesternAnimation/{{The Little Mermaid|1989}}''.
** Then came several films which kicked off Bluth's notorious curse of ExecutiveMeddling. Starting with ''WesternAnimation/RockADoodle'', what few investors he had left forced him to tone down his trademark darkness in favor of a [[LighterAndSofter lighter, more marketable]] and, most importantly, [[FollowTheLeader Disney-esque]] style which completely contradicted his own philosophy of creating films which were dark, but had catharsis. Phil Harris's CaptainObvious narration was forced upon him at the last minute after test audiences, ironically, complained about certain things not making enough sense. It ended up bombing hard enough to close down Bluth's homegrown studio, taking the rights to all of his films with it.
** 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. In addition, original distributor MGM outright ''refused'' to release the film citing uncertainty about the company's financial stability; after initially attempting to sell the film to Disney (all the more ironic as the film borrows heavily from their Renaissance-era films, seemingly trying to invoke AllAnimationIsDisney- humorously, the film received ''higher'' reviews in test screenings when shown with their logo- and after the film was sold to Fox, the film would ultimately ''become'' theirs upon their acquisition of the company in 2019), the film would ultimately go to Warner Bros., where it would flop in the spring of 1994.
** 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 its release]].
** Late into the production of ''WesternAnimation/ThePebbleAndThePenguin'', Bluth had a falling out with Warner Bros. over the failure of his last two films, control of the project was [[ExecutiveMeddling seized by MGM/United Artists]] and everything went to hell: animation was farmed out for rushed completion, resulting in OffModel or outright incomplete shots being approved, fully animated scenes were cut and several voices had to be re-recorded. Bluth was [[CreatorBacklash furious with how badly the finished film looked]] that he and Gary Goldman outright [[ScrewThisImOutOfHere abandoned ship]], Bluth [[AlanSmithee taking his director credit with him]], to start up a new animation unit at 20th Century Fox. The first project, ''Westernanimation/{{Anastasia}}'', went well, but then...
** For his final film, ''WesternAnimation/TitanAE'', Bluth and Goldman were handed an already foundering project which had already blown through 18 other directors and $30 million on pre-production alone. The two were forced to scrap the whole thing and start over with a $55 million budget and less than two years to deliver. Much of the effects and post-production work were done ''two weeks'' before its release. Then, just before its premiere, Fox lost faith in the project, foresaw the rising trend of computer animation and closed down its barely six-year-old 2D animation unit. Bluth temporarily retired from animation shortly thereafter, publicly stating that he would "never draw another character and hand the rights over to someone else."
** And this isn't even taking into account all of his projects which were abruptly canceled during pre-production either from funding being withdrawn or new animation units getting shut down.
** Bluth and Goldman have since taken to crowd-funding a prequel film to their 1983 game ''VideoGame/DragonsLair'' in the hopes of making a proper comeback, after years in DevelopmentHell. As of this writing, production has been slow.

** The ''Franchise/ToyStory'' films have all been well known for having this.
*** [[WesternAnimation/ToyStory1 The first film]] was subject to constant ExecutiveMeddling, pushing to make it [[DarkerAndEdgier more adult and cynical]]. Pixar, this being their first feature, dutifully followed the notes from the executives, even if they didn't agree with them. When a preview cut was declared unwatchable, Jeffrey Katzenberg, then head of animation at Disney, asked with some concern why on earth Pixar had followed all the notes he and others had sent. Production was shut down for two weeks, while Lasseter and the others basically rewrote the entire movie, into pretty much what they wanted in the first place. The movie would survive and get finished in time for release, though Katzenberg's job did not (he ended up quitting Disney a year before the movie's release to start up Creator/DreamWorks).
*** ''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, 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/ToyStory3'' was stuck in DevelopmentHell for years, going through multiple scripts and directors. Also, when Pixar started animating the film, they thought they could save some time just using their old computer files of the main characters from the previous film. Unfortunately, when they tried, they found out that they neglected to keep them updated with their current operating system and thus were inaccessible for use, and the animators had to remake the characters from scratch.
*** ''WesternAnimation/ToyStory4'', even within a series notable for its production issues, had one of the longest and tumultuous production cycles in Pixar's history, only comparable to ''WesternAnimation/TheGoodDinosaur'' in terms of its production length and changes involved. It was slated to be co-directed with John Lasseter and Josh Cooley during its first four years of development, but a significant shakeup in production staff was announced in 2017 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. This resulted in the film's release date being pushed forward a year from its original Summer 2017 date. 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 Creator/RashidaJones (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's voice actress Creator/AnniePotts) being thrown out and rewritten. These changes forced Pixar to delay the film an entire year to properly rewrite the story, swapping release dates with ''WesternAnimation/Incredibles2'' in the process. There was also the fate of Mr. Potato Head, whose voice actor Creator/DonRickles passed away before he could record his lines. Thought Pixar considered writing the character out entirely, Rickles' estate told the team they would love to have Rickles in the film in a speaking capacity as a send-off to his character. They then had to go through decades of unused recordings of Rickles as Potato Head to construct a new performance for him.

** ''WesternAnimation/{{Ratatouille}}'' was originally developed in 2001 by Jan Pinkava, but Pixar lost faith in Pinkava and ultimately replaced him with Creator/BradBird.

** ''WesternAnimation/{{Brave}}'' had title changes, the dismissal of director/co-writer Brenda Chapman, and many scenes being rewritten and/or dropped during production.

* Famed animator Creator/RichardWilliams had two films during his time in the industry that have proved absolute headaches to make.
** ''WesternAnimation/RaggedyAnnAndAndyAMusicalAdventure'' was produced by a team of Broadway producers who'd never worked on a film, let alone animation, making it difficult for them to know what they wanted. The crew eventually assembled consisted mostly of recent art school graduates and veterans of theatrical shorts who'd never worked on a feature, including director Creator/RichardWilliams himself, meaning that everyone was at different levels of experience and ability. Williams, who [[PrimadonnaDirector could not work for a budget]], balked at the initial proposition for [[LimitedAnimation UPA-style animation]] and insisted that, to get the storybook quality visuals he desired, he would need to have two fully operational units on either coast. This ambitious technique, plus the cost to fly Willaims back and forth between the two to supervise and for animators to mail their scenes to the New York studio, caused the once-minuscule budget to skyrocket, slowed the production down resulting in several missed deadlines. It confused the animators, with one unit sometimes completing a scene the same day it had been assigned to the other unit. Emery Hawkins, who animated [[SignatureScene the infamous "Greedy sequence,"]] got fed up and [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere quit halfway through]] reanimating the scene for the second time, forcing two assistants to finish it for him. When the studio told Williams that there was no money left to give the film his trademark ArtisticTitle, he cursed them out and animated it himself. Williams was eventually [[ExecutiveMeddling fired and replaced]] at the tail end of production simply to get it finished.
** ''WesternAnimation/TheThiefAndTheCobbler'', as documented in 2012's ''Persistence of Vision'', is one of the most infamous examples in animation history. 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.

* ''Animation/TheTragedyOfMan'', a highly ambitious and faithful retelling of a 1800s Hungarian theatrical play of the same name, started production in 1983, and the animating process began in 1988. A couple years later, the Soviet Union collapsed, taking Hungary's former studio system with it, along with shoving the country's already waning animation industry further downhill. Without state-sponsored backing, what was initially envisioned as a 6 year project only landed in theaters in 2011 -- the time frame was indeed correct, the animation did take about 6 years to complete, with the rest of that time being spent on trying to raise funds. Each of the film's 15 acts, all done in their own distinct art and animation style, were completed out of order and showcased at various film festivals to get funding. Most of the voice actors had to be replaced as the originals got too old for their roles. In the end, director Marcell Jankovics licencing his older animated short ''Sisyphus'' for a GM car commercial gave him a financial boost, and he was happy the movie got finished at all.

* ''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 an interesting situation for Paramount: because Feiss directed very little of the movie, they would still have to give credit to Brown, but 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 (not even in an AlanSmithee fashion), making it one of the extremely rare films to not have a credited director.

* ''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 until it was announced in late January 2022 that Paramount Animation had bought the film and had immediately set a theatrical release date of July 22 for it (the film arguably serving as a slot replacement for their film ''Under The Boardwalk'', which was set to release around that time but was abruptly removed from Paramount's release schedule in a concurrent move.)

** 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 projects. 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.

** The ''WesternAnimation/ToyStory'' films have all been well known for having this.

*** ''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 [[DiedDuringProduction 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.