10 Weirdest Unmade Disney Films Of All Time

While The Walt Disney Co. DIS can claim a cinematic heritage of beloved classics, it also has a long history of conceiving oddball ventures that never found their ways into theaters. To celebrate this hidden side of the studio's creative dimensions, here are the 10 weirdest Disney films that, for one reason or another, never got made.

“Alice in Wonderland”: Walt Disney’s planned entry into feature films was not supposed to be “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” In 1933, he sought to adapt Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland” starring Mary Pickford in the title role. Although Pickford was 31 years old at the time and was not eager to resume playing the juvenile roles that made her a superstar in the silent movie era, she agreed to do a make-up and costume test in Technicolor – Disney hoped to have the live-action Pickford playing opposite an animated cast.

Alas for Disney, he was unaware that Paramount Pictures was already deep into producing its own “Alice in Wonderland” when Pickford’s test was made. The test footage is considered lost, although a color photograph survives to show what Pickford’s Alice could have been. Disney eventually made a full-length animated "Alice in Wonderland" in 1950.

"Dufus": During the 1980s, Disney chief Michael Eisner decided that he wanted to adapt J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye" as a feature film. But the author had famously swatted away inquiries from multiple filmmakers eager to bring Holden Caulfield's adventures to the big screen, and Eisner decided he could have his own version without getting Salinger involved.

Eisner's solution was to have a coming-of-age story that was very similar to Salinger's work without duplicating the characters. In this case, the story would not involve humans, but talking German shepherds; Dufus was Holden's canine doppelganger. Perhaps not surprisingly, no one at Disney shared Eisner's enthusiasm for this idea and "Dufus" evaporated from sight.

“Ghostopolis”: Doug TenNapel’s graphic novel was intended as live-action film starring Hugh Jackman as a Supernatural Immigration Task Force agent tasked with apprehending ghosts and returning them to the afterlife – except on one mission he accidentally sends a living teen boy to the other side and is forced to retrieve him.

Jackman also committed to produce the film, which was announced in 2009. But Disney never got around to assigning a director and screenwriter to “Ghostopolis.” The project stalled indefinitely and eventually faded from consideration.

“The Gremlins”: Disney collaborated with author Roald Dahl on a proposed 1943 feature film about the mischievous creatures who sabotage World War II-era British military aircraft in revenge for having their woodlands home destroyed. Dahl story was published by Random House.

Unfortunately for Disney and Dahl, the British government insisted on being involved in the production – Dahl was on wartime assignment with his nation’s embassy in Washington, D.C., during this time and could not freely collaborate with Hollywood producers. Unwilling to have outside interference in the project, Disney jettisoned it.

“Mort”: Terry Pratchett’s 1987 fantasy novel about a teenager who is apprenticed to Death might seem like an unlikely Disney project, but John Musker and Ron Clements, the directors of the 2009 film “The Princess and the Frog,” planned to bring it to screen.

Unfortunately for Musker and Clements, “Mort” was part of Pratchett’s Discworld series of books, and the author insisted that Disney purchase the entire franchise. As Disney had no inclination to adapt Pratchett’s other works, the proposed “Mort” was declared D.O.A. No artwork associated with the project has been seen publicly.

 

“The Shadow King”: Henry Selick, the director of “The Nightmare Before Xmas” and “Coraline,” was tasked in 2010 with creating Pixar’s first stop-motion feature. Selick’s tale of an orphaned boy with “fantastically” weird hands was meant for a 2013 release, but the project was halted one year earlier.

Disney reportedly sank $50 million into “The Shadow King,” making it the company’s most expensive unfinished project to date. The company gave Selick permission to shop the project elsewhere, but no other studio was interested in completing the work.

“Toinette’s Philip”: In the early 1950s, Disney considered adapting Mrs. C.V. Jamison’s 1894 novel about a young orphaned white boy raised by his Creole nurse as an animated short. For a studio with a history of racially insensitive animated characters, having a sincere story about interracial friendships would have been a dramatic change of pace.

Character sketches were done for the project, but the studio got cold feet and quietly jettisoned the endeavor. To date, there has never been a film version of “Toinette’s Philip.”

“Where the Wild Things Are”: Disney acquired the rights to Maurice Sendak’s beloved 1963 children’s book in the early 1980s that would combine traditional and computer animation. John Lasseter and Glenn Keane collaborated on test footage of the Sendak tale, using 2D characters against 3D backgrounds.

Disney dropped the project, citing a high budget, and also dropped Lasseter, who went to work at Lucasfilm; Keane was assigned to “The Great Mouse Detective.” Sendak’s book was made into a live-action film by Spike Jonze in 2009 while the Disney footage later wound up online.

“Wild Life”: This 1999 animated feature was centered on Ella, a zoo elephant who is accidentally electrocuted and awakens from her shock believing she is a famous pop singer who is the toast of New York City’s club scene.

The film was supposed to be the first non-Pixar CGI film produced by Disney, but the project was scuttled after some very non-Disney adult humor was laced into the script – Vice Chairman Roy Disney reportedly killed the project over a joke when two stereotypical gay characters were entering a sewer and one asked his comrade, “Have you ever been down a manhole before?”

“Yellow Submarine”: In 2009, Disney announced it was remaking the 1968 animated classic “Yellow Submarine” as a 3D animated production using performance capture technology. The studio licensed 16 Beatles songs from Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC and EMI-Capitol Records for the soundtrack and assigned the film to ImageMovers Digital, a joint venture formed in 2007 with filmmaker Robert Zemeckis.

However, the first two ImageMovers Digital productions made under the Disney banner, “A Christmas Carol” (2009) and “Mars Needs Moms” (2010), were box office failures. Disney lost faith in the joint venture and shut down its projects, including “Yellow Submarine.” Some test footage and character sketches from this aborted project later emerged online.

Photos courtesy of The Disney Wiki and Cinema Crazed; top photo courtesy of Resolución Argenta.