‘Lion King’ or ‘Aladdin’? Not without this Disney film that’s on its way to IPH
What would the world look like without “The Little Mermaid” or “The Lion King?” An absence of “Aladdin” or “Beauty and the Beast” from your childhood?
It seems insurmountable now to think of those Disney classics never happening, but the possibility of an end to the company’s animation department in the 1980s was a real possibility.
It’s unfair to place all of the blame on Disney’s 1985 film, “The Black Cauldron,” said Neil O’Brien, author of the book, “After Disney.” But that movie carried the hopes and dreams of not only the Disney animators but the decision-makers trying to carry on Walt Disney’s legacy 20 years after the figurehead passed away.
On Sunday, July 13, O’Brien will be hosting a talkback after a screening of “The Black Cauldron” at the Independent Picture House as part of the IPH’s series, “The Summer of ‘85.”
Disney After Walt
“It comes at a very interesting time for the company. Not only is (‘The Black Cauldron’) in development for most of those 20 years (after Walt Disney died), but it’s also during a period where Disney is struggling to find where the audience has gone,” O’Brien said.
“Hollywood undergoes two major shifts after Walt dies. You have the first American new wave of movies like ‘The Godfather’, ‘The Graduate’ and ‘Easy Rider’, which bring about a lot more edgy material: violence, obscenities and suggestive content. Disney largely survives that first wave by just putting its head in the sand and just pushing out material for the core family audience.”
This period isn’t dead for Disney. While it lacks the “Snow White” or “Pinocchio” hits of its early days, animated movies such as “The Jungle Book” and “One Hundred and One Dalmations” still captivate audiences — just not nearly to the level of that first wave of classics.
“Right after Walt’s death, literally within days after Walt’s death, his brother Roy Disney seriously considered shutting down animation. Animation at this point is just a part of the film portfolio. So that film portfolio is just part of the larger company. So even though it’s been sort of the heart of the business, it’s really become a smaller and smaller player as the 1960s goes on,” O’Brien said.
Some of the key players to the animation department, called “The Nine Old Men,” had left the company for other opportunities. 30-40 years of experience walk out the door as preparations on the company post-Walt begins.
“‘The Black Cauldron’ just became this sort of long gestating project where some people were enthusiastic about it the whole time. Some people felt that it never achieved its promise,” he said.
“Among a lot of people I spoke to there’s sort of a sense of like: ‘Yeah it’s not my favorite movie I worked on and yet it’s sort of an important movie because it does sort of give animation its drive for so many years.’”
The Black Cauldron? Or the Black Hole?
The struggle of the movie may not be entirely the creatives’ fault. A lot of in-fighting in Disney also made this period for the company tense.
“You sort of have these competing forces in the mid ’70s, and then by the time the film’s almost done in 1984, Ron Miller (Walt’s son-in-law) is forced to resign from the company. And all of a sudden a new regime comes in and ‘Cauldron’s’ very much under the microscope from this new regime,” O’Brien said.
“It’s been in production for a long time, costs a lot of money and they come through and they see a film that they don’t respond to at all … ‘Cauldron’ just seems totally out of the kind of film making that they’ve been doing over (in other studios), and so the film gets chopped up really throughout the nine months or so from when that new regime comes in until it’s eventually released in the summer of 1985.”
The movie is a box office bomb, grossing $21.3 million against its $44 million budget. While Disney puts out a few more films over the corresponding years, it isn’t until “The Little Mermaid” in 1989 and “Beauty and the Beast” in 1991 when the company reigns supreme in the animation space once more.
“Cauldron” finds a new life on home video later on, and O’Brien says the legacy of the film shouldn’t be that of a company killing bomb, but as a testing ground for the animators that would bring Disney classics to life in the 1990s.
“(Disney has) now invested so much in their young people who are eager for their own projects and have been given the mentorship from some of the veterans, and also the ability to learn and grow that they’re now ready for a project like ‘Mermaid’ then ‘Beauty and the Beast’, and ‘Aladdin’ and beyond.”
See it at the IPH
O’Brien said he’s excited to see the film in the context of the theaters “Summer of ‘85” series because it shows the breadth of that year in film and how it goes past the biggest hits such as “Back to the Future” and “Rambo: First Blood Part II.”
“(‘The Black Cauldron’ is) one of the few kids films from that summer. There’s a handful of others, but it was just a very different marketplace in 1985, when this movie was coming out, because there weren’t a lot of movies for kids. It’s a really interesting series they put together, and I’m looking forward to coming down and talking about this specific movie.”
‘The Black Cauldron’
Location: The Independent Picture House, 4237 Raleigh St.
Showtimes: The talkback with Neil O’Brien will be on Sunday at 2:30 p.m.; the film will be playing on Saturday, Tuesday and Thursday, as well.
Tickets: independentpicturehouse.org/movies/the-black-cauldron/
