The Abandoned Disney Sequels
Disney is known for having some really good sequels, and some really bad sequels. Some of the good ones include Frozen II (which is the 2nd highest grossing film ever), Incredibles 2, The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea, and The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride. Some classic Disney tales have gone on to have even more than 2 films, including the Aladdin franchise, the Beauty and the Beast franchise, and the Cinderella franchise. There are some Disney classics that never got a sequel - but do you ever wonder whether they were considered? Let’s explore the Disney sequels the company considered making, but were eventually cancelled.
Snow White Returns
The sequel to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was never meant to be another full-length animated feature film, but rather just a short, so they could use the unused animation from the original. There were two major scenes that Ward Kimball animated that never made it in the original film: the soup eating sequence, and the bed building sequence. Both were meant to be put together to make a story for the sequel. It’s implied that the film was set to take place a year or two after Snow White goes off with the Prince. She goes back to the cottage to visit the dwarfs each year, and this is when those scenes would take place. It was never officially said why this sequel never happened.
There was also a planned CGI prequel meant to be made in the early 2000s, to explain how the Evil Queen became royalty, and how the dwarves all met each other. But as the story was passed along, it began to change and become more dark than it was intended.
The soup eating sequence by Ward Kimball. Image from: https://filmic-light.blogspot.com/2017/12/layout-drawing-for-deleted-soup-eating.html
Pinocchio II
In the early 2000s, Disneytoon Studios was an expansion of the Walt Disney Company, with the sole-purpose of creating direct-to-video movies. Many Disney sequels were direct-to-video, which Pinocchio II was meant to be.
Creating a sequel for Pinocchio seemed like a no brainer for the studio, and Robert Reese was brought on as the writer for it. When speaking about the film, he never mentioned much of the plot, other than that Pinocchio was going to learn about why things feel unfair sometimes. Reese says,
“Pinocchio II was a joy to work on, because the world created by [author Carlo] Collodi as envisioned by the geniuses who made the original film was just so fantastic”
In 2006, John Lasseter was promoted to CEO of Walt Disney Animation Studios. He wasn’t a fan of direct-to-video films, so he cancelled this project instead of seeing it through.
Dumbo II
Decades after Dumbo was released, Dumbo II was set to release in 2001. Robert Reese was asked to work on this film as well. It was supposed to be about all of the baby animals getting lost after leaving the circus and trying to find their way home. New characters were going to be introduced, and it was going to be a story based around friendship. The project was well underway, even a behind the scenes trailer was put out, but the project ended up being cancelled. John Lasseter is also responsible for cancelling this film when he was promoted.
Dumbo 2 title. Image from: https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Dumbo_II
The Aristocats II
Similarly to Dumbo, Disney writers planned to create a sequel to The Aristocats in the early 2000s. Disneytoon Studios had already gone through many different versions of story and character ideas when they finally hired an animation director. Time and budget was tight for this movie, and they attempted to just work with the first storyline they had. Tod Carter, the animation director for the film, said they were only given 4 weeks to revise and fine tune it for presentation. The plot followed the cats on a cruise ship where they had a run-in with a jewelry thief. They also added a love interest for Marie. In the end, executives didn’t think it would hold up since the turnaround time was so quick, and they cancelled the project all together.
The Aristocats II concept art. Image from: https://aminoapps.com/c/cartoon/page/item/the-aristocats-2-lost/aV1I_8IKRZJaEvnvjpawBVJG7eEw2mb
The Nightmare Before Christmas 2
This film was only proposed rather than was being developed like the other sequel. The major problem with it that Tim Burton was opposed to was having the movie be CGI rather than stop-motion. According to Screen Rant, Burton is the one that officially convinced the studio not to do it.
“Because it’s not a mass-market kind of thing, it was important to kind of keep that purity of it. I try to respect people and keep the purity of the project as much as possible.”
Roger Rabbit II: The Toon Platoon
Who Framed Roger Rabbit was a major success, and still is an iconic movie to this day. It was produced by Steven Spielberg’s production company, Amblin Entertainment. Just a year after the film’s release, the studio began working on writing another movie. This movie was going to be a prequel, set in the 1940s, following Roger during the time of WWII. The project was cancelled when the story started to become too dark, including the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Nazis, battlefields, and more. Steven Spielberg pulled out of the movie by then, and development stopped.
The ending scene of Roger Rabbit II. Image from: https://twitter.com/monsterislandb/status/1139597754026680323
Chicken Little 2
Tod Carter was also brought on to this film as the animation director, when animators were given about the same time frame to create the plot for this movie as they did with The Aristocats 2. The movie was going to be more focused on friendship, relationship, and jealousy between the characters when someone new is introduced. John Lasseter had a hand in cancelling this movie too, but also because the original movie wasn’t massively popular with some audiences.
Reference list:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_animated_films
https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Cancelled_projects
https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Snow_White_Returns
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpac3C3P76Q
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Framed_Roger_Rabbit
https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Roger_Rabbit_II:_The_Toon_Platoon
https://www.thelist.com/340045/why-these-disney-movie-sequels-never-happened/
https://screenrant.com/nightmare-before-christmas-2-release-date-story-details-sequel/
