LEGO took great pains to find an animation house that would respect the "essence" of their franchise, as most studios reportedly wanted to put a human actor into the story despite their rule that Earth and humans don't exist in BIONICLE's multiverse.
The early treatment for the fifth movie would have featured a longer journey through the mysterious Valley of the Maze, the Element Lords as key characters, and Mata Nui and crew getting launched to Bota Magna, the land of biomechanical dinosaurs. Of course with the toyline being cancelled, the storyline had to be quickly concluded and this and the 2011 storyline were scrapped.
Mask of Light would have had a way different ending and a deeper characterization for Makuta, as revealed by early plot summaries, preliminary character descriptions and tons of stuff in the movie just not making any sense. Originally, Makuta wasn't outright evil but more misguided, with his lines about "protecting Mata Nui" being meant honestly — he wanted to keep him in a coma because his awakening would have destroyed the island. This would have happened in the movie, but the awakening got pushed back by five years to extend the story, the script was only partially rewritten to accommodate this massive change of plans (leading to multiple plot holes), and this layer of Makuta's personality was completely dropped.
The second movie was planned to be a theatrical feature instead of the rushed Direct to Video title it materialized as.
Greg Weisman worked on the first movie for a very short time before being fired for what he thought was a stupid reason, yawning at a meeting. Though some of his ideas were kept, it's interesting to imagine how the film(s) would have turned out had he stayed on board.
According to franchise creator Bob Thompson and film composer Nathan Furst, LEGO planned a Makuta origin movie for a short while, which never came to be after the toy company realized kids found flashback stories confusing. Lhikan's line "Makuta! You were sworn to protect the Matoran!" from the second film was intended as a setup for this movie. Instead, Makuta's past would be explored in various books and online stories.
Originally in one of Vakama's visions from the second film, the Coliseum tower explodes and collapses. This was animated but cut, presumably due to the Twin Tower disaster (the film came out in 2004), or perhaps because it made no sense, as the Coliseum is never under the threat of blowing up. The shot was replaced with shadowy clouds and lightning surrounding the building, taken from a later scene.
Christian Faber, one of the franchise's co-creators, claimed to have received a script for a proposed fourth movie, to be released in 2006. It featured Toa acting as generals and leading huge armies into battle. Faber reportedly threw the script away immediately, as he thought an army scene would be outside their animation budget and he also believed Toa should be advenorous heroes, not military fighters. Thus, there was no fourth BIONICLE movie made until 2009.
According to the official artbook of the movie, the Adelita twins originally started out as part of Chakal's banditos.
There was an alternate scene of which Manolo meets his ancestors and his mother according to the artbook of the movie, in which he arrives at his family ancestors' home in The Land of the Remembered, and they all in the middle of a meal when they saw Manolo walk through the front door, and all the family members having shocked looks on their faces.
The Land of the Forgotten was originally a Fisher Kingdom that slowly turned the heroes into forgotten spirits as they journeyed through it. This was cut to keep the story simple.
The spirits in the Land of the Forgotten, were originally going to be these wild, monstrous skeletal creatures that had forgotten their humanity. This was changed for two reasons; One, because some thought it would be too scary for younger viewers, and Two, to keep the story simple.
Joaquin was originally going to die in the bandit raid, crushed by his dad's statue, which would have been the moment he gave Manolo the Medal of Everlasting Life.
One interview revealed that Manolo was supposed to stay dead and was not able to have any resolution with Maria had it not been changed for being too dark.
Xibalba was originally supposed to take the form of a woman to blend in among the living humans, but that idea was scrapped.
There was a version of the movie in which Manolo actually allowed the bull to kill him as opposed to killing it himself. This was scrapped due to being too sad/non-family friendly.
A live-action movie was planned as early as 1997, right before the first book was published, and would have starred Chris Farley. The project was scrapped after Farley died.
According to director David Soren, in an early draft of the film there was going to be a small scene that confirms the Fanon theory that Edith is an Alien.
In an interview, David Soren mentioned that in an earlier draft of the film, there was going to be an homage to Magnolia during the scene where George and Harold are separated, and it was going to have “all the main characters from Krupp, to Poopypants, to Melvin, to the gardener outside the school mowing the lawn, having a little refrain. They all sang about how they were feeling unsatisfied by their current situation, and lonely”. Ultimately, the scene just didn’t work with the flow of the film, and was cut.
In one of the earliest drafts of the script, before David Soren took over as director, there was going to be a subplot about Harold starting to hang out with “the cool kids”, causing a rift between him and George. Thankfully, the filmmakers quickly realized that this subplot did not work at all, and it was cut.
Early information about the movie had Dr. Diaper, the Big Bad of the first book, as a secondary antagonist.
It was going to be a Michael Jackson vehicle—a live-action/animated film in which he was intended to star and receive a fair amount of creative control. Whether the pedophile allegations may have resulted in Jackson's exit from the project is unknown.
Apparently, said Jackson vehicle was also going to feature the Looney Tunes characters, but they got involved with another Michael.
According to director Mark Dindal, it was originally set on the back stages of Broadway, and the cats weren't as anthropomorphized.
Subway had a Kids' Pak tie-in with the film, featuring toys of Danny, Sawyer, Woolie, and Pudge. Darla was also planned to have a toy, which would have featured two switchable facial expressions; smiling and sour. However, this toy was not released to the public, as there were concerns that it could be dangerous to young children.
During the earliest development, Flint Lockwood was the most successful scientist in the world who got stuck in Swallow Falls when his food machine malfunctioned, but this characterization was deemed too unlikable.
A story line involving Vance LaFleur and The Science League was cut, although a poster remains in Flint's bedroom.
Originally, instead of Flint going to the out-of-control FLDSMDFR, the mayor shot it out of the sky, and it fell into the ocean, creating a huge monster made entirely out of food. This was cut due to the resulting monster being too similar to one in another film that had just been released in early 2009. Smaller food-monsters would eventually appear in the sequel.
Since being 100% similar to the source material would end disastrously for the narrative, the writers of Coraline played around with several ideas for the narrative format. One of them was the eponymous character talking with the audience. And the film was originally going to be much more of a musical...with the songs written by They Might Be Giants! All that remains of this notion is that for about thirty seconds Coraline's father is voiced by John Linnell, and that he even sings a song! Another song TMBG originally wrote for the film, "Careful What You Pack", ended up being on their album The Else instead - knowing the song is actually about Coraline herself adds a bit of Fridge Brilliance to the lyrics.
The Croods began development in the mid-2000s as a stop-motion feature from Aardman and Dreamworks, called "Crood Awakening". This incarnation never got off the ground because they were too busy working on Flushed Away and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit at the time. After the Executive Meddling that Flushed Away went through, Aardman left Dreamworks for Sony, and so the responsibility of Crood Awakening was all up to Dreamworks. Years later, the script was re-written, the movie was renamed, and it was finally released in 2013.
After the film's surprising success at the box office, DreamWorks confirmed that a sequel was in the making, but ended up getting into a tumultuous development cycle, compounded by DreamWorks' financial troubles that caused the release date to be repeatedly delayed. It took until 2021 to finally release the sequel The Croods: A New Age following an apparent scrapping of the project and the staff being let off the seemingly cancelled project.
More animated films in the universe of the 1966 Batman show were planned; Batman vs. Two-Face was originally going to end with that universe's version of Harley Quinn breaking Joker out of prison. But Adam West's passing changed all that.
Related to Hush, a proposed follow-up to The Batman vs. Dracula was an adaptation of Hush, which (given both the film and the series it's a spin-off of) would've likely involved Rino Romano as the Dark Knight and Kevin Michael Richardson as the Clown Prince of Crime. The image◊ created for it also showed The Penguin (who only appeared in flashbacks in the original story) and was likely done pre-Season 4 as the Clayface depicted is Ethan Bennett, not Basil Karlo.
James Tucker revealed a rejected stinger idea for Batman vs. Robin that would've set up an adaptation of Death of the Family, complete with the Joker's face having been removed by the Dollmakernote albeit this Dollmaker is the Anton Schott version combined Barton Mathis's appearance, and a combined M.O. and pinned to a wall, but it was rejected and when the Joker showed up in Hush, he still had his face.[[/note]]
James Tucker also mentioned an idea for a stinger for the aforementioned Judas Contract was to have Blackfire scheming to go after Starfire that would've set up a third movie.
During the period of Development Hell on what would become Epic (2013), Fox was close to cancelling the project and John Lasseter offered Joyce the opportunity to make Leaf Men at Pixar. Fox ended up changing their minds and the project stayed at Blue Sky. Chris Wedge stated that while Joyce's book was great, it felt rather blase for a good Hollywood blockbuster, and the Leafmen were changed into samurai-like warriors. The script went through around five rewrites before they arrived at the script that was ready to be animated in 2009.
At a time when the Garfield Specials were still in production, Jim Davis wrote a script for a feature length film titled Garfield's Judgement Day. Notably Darker and Edgier than the source material, it would have been about a storm threatening to hit the town and Garfield proposing that the pets break their taboo of talking to humans to warn them. Sadly, no animation studio was willing to animate it. Davis tried rewriting it as a special, before eventually giving up and releasing it as a stand alone book.
All plans of a Gatchaman CGI film we're eventually canceled after the 2009 Astro Boy film bombed and Imagi Studios went flat.
Early in production, the production team considered Tybalt's death being investigated by a CSI-esque group of gnomes note no, notthoseCSIs, unfortunately, led by Detective Prince (based on the Prince from the original story). The investigation would have proven Gnomeo guilty of "gnomicide", and sentenced to the wheelie bin, where he'd be thrown away in the morning. He would have managed to escape the rubbish truck and end up in a gardening centre.
Also, after the sentencing, Juliet would have tricked her father into organising her wedding to Paris (and gotten slapped by Nanette before she revealed she wasn't really going through with it) and replaced herself with one of Paris' floral creations so she could sneak out and try to reunite with Gnomeo (who'd promised to return to her). The scenes were cut because the producers thought they'd be too cliche.
All of this is small potatoes compared to Walt Disney Feature animation originally being meant to animate this film...
Happy Feet: Mumble was meant to have fully molted by the end of the film, but they decided not to have him do that and re-rendered the parts. The change happened so late in production that scenes with him molted were present in various books.
Heavy Metal was originally planned to have all the vignettes connected and a cohesive plot between all of them, but time constraints forcing production at several companies made this impossible. This would have included things like Hanover Fitse appearing on Zeke and Edsel's spaceship, declaring that Stern would go free, a vignette called "Neverwhereland", which would have the Loc-Nar landing on a planet and changing its development and culminating in World War II, linking Stern and B-17. There was also meant to be a carousel with a taxi, a bomber, Taarna's bird-thing, and the dragonfly-thing from Den in Grimaldi's house, but this was left out for various reasons. Unfortunately, there isn't any information on what would have linked the rest of the vignettes. (Because of this, several vignettes either end abruptly or have rushed-feeling resolutions.)
The first animated adaptation of The Hobbit from 1966 is just a short Ashcan Copy (see that page for details). However, a feature-length film really was originally in development, and the original plan was to have Jiří Trnka as the artist. You can see his preliminary designs here. Trnka was a highly acclaimed artist and animator well-known for often skillfully combining childlike animation with more serious themes, so had the film actually happened as envisioned, our mental image of Middle Earth may have been very different from what it is now...
Hoodwinked! originally had a much different voice cast. A couple of actors even did Voicing For Two. This was because the producers were planning for a cast made largely of lesser-known actors.
However, they eventually loosened up to allow for some more celebrity roles. Two of the first celebrity actors to join the production, Patrick Warburton and Andy Dick, would retain their roles as the Wolf and Boingo, respectively.
In an effort to save costs, the film's directors, and producer Preston Stutzman all voiced characters: Cory Edwards voiced Twitchy (with his voice sped up by 50% in Pro Tools), his brother Todd voicing the Sandwich Man (the guy in a fur suit whom Red passes by in "Great Big World" and who is seen being interviewed by the Wolf), Tony Leech voiced Det. Bill Stork, with Leech and Stutzman voicing two of the Three Little Pigs officers (Glen and Timmy). Cory and Todd Edwards' cousin Tye was brought in to voice Dolph, the husky skier and only one on the ski team who has speaking lines, and their close friend Joshua Greene voiced Jimmy (the lizard directing the commercial Kirk tries out for). Another friend of theirs, Benjy Gaither, provided a voice for Japeth (the mountain goat that Red shares a minecart with). Voice actor Tom Kenny voiced the third pig, Tommy, as well as the Wolf's informant Woolworth, while Joel McCrary voiced Chief Ted Grizzly.
For the main characters, several prolific voice actors were hired. Many did Voicing For Two, as shown here:
Tara Strong voiced Red Puckett. She also voiced Zorra, a fox who is on Granny's team at the ski race.
David Ogden Stiers voiced Kirk, as well as the private eye Nicky Flippers.
Throughout production, Hoodwinked! was shown to various distributors. The newly formed Weinstein Company signed on near the end. When they came in, the Weinsteins made several suggestions to speed up the pace of the film, especially the first 20 minutes (which comprise the opening and Red's story). A side effect is that they also did Executive Meddling, recasting many of the characters and bringing in more known actors and actresses in hopes of reaching a larger audience. The result is that of the four principal characters, only one - the Wolf - is voiced by his original actor (Patrick Warburton). So for the final film:
Despite this, Tara Strong retains her role as Zorra, David Ogden Stiers stil voices Flippers, and Tom Kenny and Tony Leech still voiced pigs Tommy and Glen.
Joshua Greene almost got replaced by Albert Brooks in voicing Jimmy. Japeth almost got recast with a better known country singer, but ultimately Benjy Gaither kept his part.
The first scripts were much closer to the original book, featuring much younger human-protagonists, a much smaller and more-annoying Toothless, and apparently had a lot of Toilet Humor. (It was changed to its final version because the directors felt the first script was too goofy and too similar to their other projects, and wanted to do something more dramatic with the idea.) Other ideas were Hiccup's mother still being alive, and apparently having a tiny dragon like a puppy, and Snotlout being a girl. A lot of the concept art is seen in the art book, and during the credits of the movie itself.
Another version of the film would have been a straight-up Heroic Fantasy. The Elder was going to have a much larger role as the village seer, and there would have been magic and a prophecy involved.
Originally in Igor, Dr. Glickenstein was working on a time machine, and went back in time one minute, discovering Igor and his inventions (Scamper and Brain), and then teaming up with his past self to kill Igor. In the end, Glickenstein was just in the movie for too long, so this was cut and he was killed off much sooner.
Vin Diesel wasn't the first choice to be the voice of the Iron Giant. The first choice was none other than Peter "Optimus Prime" Cullen. Had they stuck with this decision, it could have been awesome (and hilarious, given the live-action Transformers movie).
There used to be a sequence where the Giant's dreams would be beamed into Dean's TV. Dean would see a vague surreal world where a bunch of identical giants destroyed planet after planet, and it implied that the Giant was meant to do this before he got his head bump.
According to Ken Penders, DreamWorks Animation expressed interest in making an adaptation based off the Knuckles the Echidna side series from the Sonic the Hedgehog comics, but it never came to fruition.
There were plenty of changes made during production of Kung Fu Panda, most of which is covered in the official art book. Among other things, Tai Lung was originally going to have both an army of wolves and a clouded leopard trio known as the Wu Sisters serving under him, but they were both cut to make him seem more menacing as a One-Man Army. However, the wolves ended up going to the Big Bad of the second film and the Wu Sisters made appearances in the video games and one of the DVD shorts, so they weren't completely wasted.
The Lorax (2012) was originally going to feature a gritty rock opera ballad that would have gone along with the company growing bigger as the forest gets destroyed. The creators then determined that the song was most likely too dark for this otherwise colorful family film and instead replaced it with "How Bad Could I Be?" The original song, however, is featured as a bonus track on the soundtrack.
Madagascar: Robert Stack was originally supposed to voice Skipper the penguin, but he died before production began, so the temporary vocal track recorded by DreamWorks Animation animator Tom McGrath was left in as Skipper's voice.
Minions was going to have scenes set in medieval and pirate times. Those scenes were even finished and there are a few merchandise items based on these. However, they were cut due to the movie's length and pacing issues.
Here's an odd case — the tale of Chanticleer, time and again, was supposed to be adapted into an animated film from Disney. Walt himself, apparently, was never happy with how it kept turning out (his main issue was that he believed that it is impossible to draw a rooster in such a way as to make him sympathetic; Bill Peet's many sketches for the characters suggest otherwise), and it kept getting scrapped. Whatever the original plans were, they were probably miles better (and less weird) than the version of the tale that former Disney animator Don Bluth gave us when he decided to make his version at his own studio: Rock-A-Doodle.
The Secret of Kells was originally going to be much longer, but the studio didn't have enough funding to extend the movie. This may be why they didn't really explain a lot of things (like how Aisling is still alive, when the audience thought for sure that she died earlier on), and why the ending left a lot to be desired.
Universal had plans for a Spyro the Dragon movie for years. Unfortunately, the failure of The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon, and the Activision-Blizzard merger that year, effectively shut production of the movie down. Activision, the new owners, would later abandon the movie entirely in favor of Skylanders.
Originally, the Star Wars: The Clone Wars pilot film was going to feature Anti-Hero ARC trooper Alpha-17 as the primary clone character. George Lucas pointed out that the main cast would consist of Anakin, Ahsoka, Artoo, and Alpha, and the ARC trooper was replaced with an original character named Captain Rex to avoid alliteration.
There were plans for a CGI Star Trek film called The Lions of the Night that would feature the Kzinti from Larry Niven's Known Space novels, previously established as a Trek race in Niven's Star Trek: The Animated Series episode "The Slaver Weapon". Despite the backing of both Niven and Gene Roddenberry, it never happened. The writer, Jimmy Diggs, would later rework it into a Star Trek: Enterprise episode which never happened either.
Richard Williams' The Thief and the Cobbler, while unfinished due to Executive Meddling, was re-edited and released as Arabian Knight, a 1995 flop that made various changes that Williams did not approve of. A Recobbled Cut was made in 2006 with the mostly-finished original work recut into more like what Williams was aiming at. Williams is best known to the public for animating Who Framed Roger Rabbit and highly regarded among his peers.
Yellow Submarine: When The Beatles decided that they wanted to cameo in the film after all, the film-makers were happy to throw them in — but the decision was made so late that there was not enough money to mix proper animation into that scene. (It works anyway.)
For that matter, The Beatles believed that as it was being produced by the same producers of the Beatle cartoons of the mid-'60's, which they hated at the time, they felt the film was a bad idea and only gave them half-hearted songs for the film's soundtrack, to fulfill the contract Brian Epstein signed in 1967. By the time the group saw the finished product, and liked and supported it, it was too late to offer better quality material. The songs in question—"Only A Northern Song," "All Together Now" and "It's All Too Much"—were recorded during the Sgt. Pepper's/Magical Mystery Tour sessions all-throughout 1967. "Hey Bulldog" was the only song not recorded during these sessions, having been completed in 1968 prior to the group's spiritual meditation retreat to India and is considered the only "new" song composed for the film. Lennon reportedly shipped the recordings to Heinz Edelmann at TVC-London with a note that read "Can you use any of these?"
It was also believed that the Beatles initially wanted to disassociate themselves with Submarine after the stinging criticism of their TV special Magical Mystery Tour.
There's a bit of a nod towards that in the released version of the movie - in the opening montage which shows how happy a place Pepperland is, there's a shot of Old Fred picking a bouquet of flowers and giving them to a lady who is never seen again.
Producer Al Brodax really wanted a character he'd made up called the Shaggy Seal to be in the movie as a love interest for Jeremy but nobody else was interested in the idea.
A semi-sequel Strawberry Fields Forever was planned at one point according to Chris Gore's 1999 book The 50 Greatest Movies Never Made. Plans for the movie were meant to have it computer animated; had it been done, it would have predated Pixar's Toy Story as the first fully computer animated feature film. According to the same book, the producers behind the film concept even went as far as to produce ten whole minutes of test footage which has since vanished.
There were plans for a 3D animated Power Rangers movie. It would have been a reimagining of the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers first season. However, the reasoning for why the movie was dumped vary - some say Toei nixed it, some say Saban ultimately said no.
The Powerpuff Girls Movie was originally pitched to have all the show's regular villains battling to see who would become the ultimate ruler of Townsville (and the world, for that matter). But it left very little screen time for the girls themselves, so the pitch for an origin story for both the girls and Mojo Jojo was made and accepted.
Norm of the North was slated to be a direct-to-video release before the decision was made to have Lionsgate pick up the rights to release the film to theaters. At that point, it was too late to update the film to meet cinematic value.
Originally, Crest Animation, the studio behind Alpha and Omega, was tapped to produce the movie instead of Splash Entertainment.
My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Friendship Games had an entire subplot removed, which also lead to a different ending, in which Sunset Shimmer, getting homesick, begins thinking about wanting to return to Equestria. It would have lead to a duet between her and Human!Twilight and Pony!Twilight appearing to help Sunset sort her feelings out. At the end, the Human!Twilight would have returned to Crystal Prep with her now much friendlier classmates and Sunset would have decided to stay in the human world, though opted for occasional visits to Equestria now and then.
According to early concept art from the 2017 Hasbro leak, originally this would have been a full-on Continuity Reboot as opposed to a Distant Sequel to Friendship Is Magic, with the fifth generation being centered on new iterations of the Mane 6 complete with race swaps for some characters (such as Twilight Sparkle being an Earth pony, Pinkie Pie a pegasus, and Fluttershy a unicorn). Early CGI models of this version of G5 still exist, showing some of the aformentioned race swap.
Other material in the 2017 leak included concepts for various villains who didn't make the final cut, such as a vain prince based on longmas (dragon-horses from Chinese myth) and a towering hooded villain who would've been revealed to actually be a very short, elephant-like creature who overcompensates for being the shortest of his species and would've used this to relate to Spike. Concept art also exists of a settlement called Neon City, consisting of brightly lit, colorful buildings in visual contrast to dark surroundings and a deep pit — depending on the concept sketch in question, the city could have surrounded the pit, stood on a platform above it, or been at its bottom.
Early setting explorations also mentioned the thee pony tribes existing in separate worlds that used to be a single one before a World Sundering event. In the finished movie, this persists in a much less extreme from as the three tribes living in separate lands.
An early opening of the film would've featured Argyle telling the story of the Mane 6 to Sunny as opposed to the Mane Six showing up as part of a playdate sequence.
An alternative version of the ending was storyboarded: After Sunny became an alicorn by the power of the three crystals, Sprout would've tried to escape, but be stopped by Izzy using her magic. His mother would have confronted him and forced him to apologize for his actions and promise to never ever do it again. After he's free, he would have asked his mom if he was a good sheriff, which she'd respond that he wasn't. The scene can be found here.
Unlike the final cut of the film in where Sunny and the cast can go in and out of Maretime Bay any time they want, originally there would've been a wall around Maretime Bay which Sunny would've had to go through in order to visit the film's other locations.
In early designs, Sunny's alicorn form would have her wings and horn be physical instead of ethereal, her braid would act as a Power Limiter and her stature would become bigger to resemble the older alicorns like Celestia.
Early detailed models of Pipp and Zipp had feathers around their hooves, which were removed as they didn't animate properly when performing more human articulations. Early artwork also has them as various shades of solid purple in color, while other sketches have Zipp be entirely red.
The giant robot Sprout drives in the climax was originally going to be designed after his mother.
One of the mountains at the end of "Looking Out for You" was to be Canterlot-esque, but decided against it to avoid an exact time skip.
A deleted scene from an alternate version of the movie called Storm Heist would have Sunny and her friends discover the Pony Crystals are losing power and seek to restore magic to the crystals. A power surge would occur at Zephyr Heights while they try to steal the Pegasus Crystal. Here the crystal would have been apart of Pipp's stage instead of Queen Haven's crown. This version also shows that Pegasi are still able to fly despite magic being gone.
Early versions of the script had bulliesfor Izzy "but Izzy being lovely Izzy would just react with kindness and still offer friendship."
A deleted scene from an early version of the movie had Sunny and Argyle try to warn everypony about the Earth Pony Crystal losing its magic only for both of them to be dismissed as being weird.
When Planet 51 was being imported to the United States for distribution, it was initially picked up by New Line Cinema. Halfway through production, Warner Bros. took over New Line and the producers demanded that the release date be pushed to November 2008, which was the original month Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was going to be released. Warner refused and decided to cut the film from their slate. The distribution rights were later picked up by Sony, who opted to push the initial summer 2009 release date to November 20th of that year.
The Transformers: The Movie had a script that had a lot of differences from what was seen when the movie came out:
There were four humans introduced in the script unconnected to the Witwickys - Colonel Rusty Steel, General Blaze, computer programmer Ellen Prentiss and her son Daniel. With the exception of General Blaze, the humans would aid the Autobots in their fight with the Decepticons and the search for Unicron.
Optimus Prime still dies in this early version thanks to Hot Rod's interference, but so does Megatron, who is killed by his soldiers' incompetency after getting his body back to Cybertron. His spirit is restored to the Galvatron body by "the Entity", who is later revealed to be Unicron. Optimus, before passing on, gives an Autobot named Magnus his "matrix", implied to be his life essence, becoming Ultra Magnus.
The Entity charges Galvatron to recruit his Decepticons and empowers them before sending them to Earth to feed the planet's power to it. It also destroys Cybertron to feed itself, leading to Galvatron swearing revenge. The Decepticons would capture Earth and the Autobots would learn that Earth only had days to live, forcing them to escape the planet in search of Unicron.
The Quintessons here weren't the massive five-faced machine but a race of lanky robots.
Ultra Magnus also dies in this version, killed by Galvatron, who steals the "matrix" for himself. Hot Rod still battles Galvatron and takes back the "matrix" to destroy Unicron, but he doesn't become Rodimus Prime here.
Robert Rodriguez was originally the director of the movie. He was replaced by Kelly Asbury late in production, though he is still a producer of the film, along with being credited for the story.
Lucky Bat was mocked up as a Pez dispenser along with Moxy, Ox, and Ugly Dog for the movie's collection, but never made it past the prototype stage, unlike the other three.
For Wolfwalkers, main character Robyn Goodfellowe was originally going to be a boy. The filmmakers realized early on that Robyn's character and the story as a whole would work better if she were a girl instead, since the struggles women had to go through at the time the film is set (the 17th century) made for different stakes and a more interesting conflict.
The movie rights to Jim Benton's children's book series Franny K. Stein were optioned in 2007 to a virtually unknown independent production company called East of Doheny, who planned to work with Gotham Group to create an animated film series based on the books. As of 2020, no updates on the film series' development have been made since the announcement of the adaptation plans and it is likely that East of Doheny Productions has quietly gone bankrupt.
A live-action/animated hybrid film called Crazy Macaroni or The Error of Professor Bugensburg, or Macaroni Madness for short, was being developed by the Ukrainian animator David Cherkassky in 1992. Described as "a surreal fairy tale for adult viewers" and starring many of Cherkassky's usual voice actors for his previous projects such as Adventures of Captain Vrungel and Treasure Island (1988), around 4-and-a-half minutes of footage currently exists in the form of a trailer; however, it was never finished due to a lack of funding. From what can be gathered by the footage, it looked to be quite a bit more risqué than Cherkassky's previous works, and the combination of animation and live-action footage was somewhat more sophisticated than its use in Treasure Island (1988).
Back in 2015, it was announced that Jared Hess was set to direct a Nicktoons crossover movie. While details were scarce, it was supposed to be a live-action/animation hybrid, and all of the cartoon characters would have been limited to the Nicktoons' 90's catalogue. (i.e, Rugrats, Ren & Stimpy, Aaahh!!! Real Monsters etc.) However, a Facebook grouped name The Rise And Fall of Nickelodeon later got word that the film never got off the ground. Joe Murray, the creator of Rocko's Modern Life, said Jared only sent a pitch to Paramount, which got rejected, only for him to then pretend the film was still in development anyway, in a last ditch effort to have the internet's hype do the work for him and have the higher ups change there minds. Judging by the fact the movie is on this page and there hasn't been a single word about a Nicktoons crossover film since then, it didn't work.
There were also some rumors kicking around soon after Anastasia was released that Bluth would be working on an adaptation of Deep Wizardry, which sure would have been somethin' note mostly because it's not the first Young Wizards book, but the second in the series). He was also supposedly considering The Belgariad and The Quintaglio Ascension Trilogy. And he was even one of many directors rumored to have had a go at The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005) film!
An early draft for Anastasia had an extensive opening number called "Rulers of Russia", the Dowager Empress's name was Tatiana, and many servants, including young!Dimitri, had far more lines. There were also several cut characters and songs, including cute orphans and additional cute little animals. Bartok the bat was also a far raunchier character, with his own mini-reprise of "Paris Holds the Key to Your Heart" that included the line: Paris holds the key to my heart, French bat-chicks hang out at Montmarte, we'll eat some insects, then go home and have—. (That actually might explain the random female bat that shows up at the end...) And at the end, Dimitri would get hypnotized by Rasputin as one of the ways to attempt to kill Anastasia.
The whole reason Anastasia got made was that Fox obtained the rights to two films, and asked Don Bluth to pick one to adapt. The one he didn't choose? My Fair Lady.
Don Bluth is said to have once wondered, "I wouldn't mind collaborating with another director again. I think James Cameron and I could come up with something really good. Can you imagine if James Cameron made an animated film?" Can you, indeed...
All Dogs Go to Heaven was originally intended to be part of an anthology of three short stories directed by Don Bluth. And Charlie Barker was a detective in the original draft. Burt Reynolds' interest in the role got the story expanded to feature-length but it isn't known what happened to the detective plot, except that it has since been picked up by fanfic writers.
Originally, none of the characters from The Land Before Time were actually going to talk, but this was changed toward the end of production as an attempt to avoid copying the "Rite of Spring" segment from Fantasia shot by shot (the battle between Littlefoot's mother and the Sharptooth even looks almost exactly like the battle between the Stegosaurus and the Tyrannosaurus rex!). This is also true with Disney's Dinosaur, which was originally almost going to be directed by Paul Verhoven of all people!
But that's not all. The now infamous original cut of the film has Littlefoot finding the valley, after he goes off on his own and the others go with Cera. His mother's ghost makes him realize he has to go back and find the others because they won't make it on their own. The defeat of Sharptooth happens after he finds the others, and then they all go to the valley. Interestingly, some of the animation was still used; if you watch the background when Littlefoot is telling his mom he'll never find the Great Valley, the big rock they push onto Sharptooth is still clearly visible in its original place. Oddly, the original plot was evident in the paperback picture books that were released.
Additionally, there are a lot of additional deleted scenes that ended up on the cutting room floor! Notably is one with the group finding an oasis and getting turned away by the two groups of dinosaurs already there, who only wanted their own kind to eat and drink. There were other scenes deleted for being too scary, such as Sharptooth's face up close as he sinks under the water, and a full-on visual of Sharptooth jumping onto the back of Littlefoot's mother, the scene which is in shadow in the final film (although early VHS copies, apparently).
Many members of the Land Before Time forum site, The Gang of Five, as well as pretty much any fans of the film in general, are dedicated to the end to track down these missing scenes, and restore the movie in the full form Don originally intended it to be, making "what could have been" an actuality.
Another particularly fascinating rumored Don Bluth coulda-been: After acquiring the rights to the Beatles' songs in the mid-1980's Michael Jackson approached Bluth with a movie idea called Strawberry Fields Forever. It would consist of animated Fantasia-style vignettes featuring Beatles songs, similar to Yellow Submarine. Not only did Don Bluth agree to it, he also planned on making it entirely in CGI. Had the movie been made, it would have predated the ground-breaking Toy Story by about eight years. Further along in the project, the premise became revamped so that characters from Beatles songs (like Mr. Mustard and the Walrus) would act as New York City gangsters. Among other reasons, the main reason why the project fell through was because the surviving Beatles members denied permission to use their images in an animated film. The only part of the film that managed to be made was test footage of the "Beatles gangsters."
There's a long, long list of animated films that were never made in this Cartoon Brew post. Quoting from the article, "Imagine if Orson Welles had released an animated feature at the height of his influence?"
At one point, Bakshi was also offered Blade Runner.
Also, he and John Kricfalusi planned a Teen Comedy called Bobby's Girl, but TriStar Pictures cut off funding after a change of hands.
Cool World was scripted as an animated erotic horror about an underground cartoonist who falls in love and has sex with his creation (a blonde bombshell named Debbie Dallas) and is the proud father of a half-cartoon, half-human freak who hates herself and goes on a rampage against her father. Then Executive Meddling drastically changed the plot into a Roger Rabbit knock-off with none of the appeal of the original, and it bombed spectacularly.
Back in the early '90s, Nickelodeon was in talks with 20th Century Fox to make movies based off of their three main Nicktoons: Rugrats, Doug, and The Ren & Stimpy Show. However, plans for them fell through and these original ideas would go unused. Doug and the Rugrats would get their own movies, though Doug would get his through Disney and Rugrats from Paramount. Ren and Stimpy would go movieless.
They were also reported to have the rights to Horton Hatches the Egg, which they would produce as a sequel to Horton Hears a Who!, but that was years ago (around the same time they got the rights to Who), and nothing has come of it. With Audrey Geisel moving shop over to Illumination Entertainment, and later Warner Animation Group, a film based on Egg seems unlikely. At least, to be produced by Blue Sky.
An earlier attempt to adapt the franchise into an animated film came in 2014 when Sony Pictures Animation held discussions with Nintendo, spearheaded by producer Avi Arad (best known for co-founding Marvel Studios and producing the Spider-Man Trilogy) and then-TriStar Pictures head Tom Rothman, to produce such a film. Pictures were taken of Arad with Shigeru Miyamoto and Satoru Iwata, suggesting the negotiations were close to finalization. According to leaked emails from the massive studio hack, Sony executives were hoping for a series of animated Mario movies, and at one pointed suggested they would potentially pave the way for further adaptations of Nintendo franchises down the road, culminating in a Super Smash Bros. crossover movie. The management shakeup post-hack resulted Rothman replacing Amy Pascal as head of Sony Pictures' movie group and Sony Pictures Animation reorienting its release strategy, thus shelving the Mario adaptation. When Sony declared the project dead, Nintendo decided to start talking to Universal.
Two more films in The LEGO Movie franchise, a racing film titled The Billion Brick Race and a sequel to The LEGO Batman Movie titled LEGO Superfriends, were planned, but they were cancelled when the rights to future movies were sold to Universal after they weren't satisfied with the box office sales of The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part.
for the fifth movie would have featured a longer journey through the mysterious Valley of the Maze, the Element Lords as key characters, and Mata Nui and crew getting launched to Bota Magna, the land of biomechanical dinosaurs. Of course with the toyline being cancelled, the storyline had to be quickly concluded and this and the 2011 storyline were scrapped.
