Lengthy Excerpt From Mouse in Transition by Steve Hulett
http://www.cartoonbrew.com/untold-tales/mouse-in-transition-cauldron-of-confusion-chapter-10-102743.html
(also available on Amazon)
https://www.amazon.com/Mouse-Transition-Insiders-Feature-Animation/dp/1941500242/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1523328439&sr=8-1&keywords=mouse+in+transition
"The studio had owned the rights to The Chronicles of Prydain, a five-book series by Lloyd Alexander, for a decade, and lots of animation staffers had worked on it.
Don Bluth had taken a run at the property when he was being groomed to be the next Woolie Reitherman,
and Tad Stones (his showrunner career at Disney Television Animation still ahead of him) wrote several treatments.
But as The Fox and the Hound wrapped up, studio chief Ron Miller was getting serious about having a top-flight, big-budget animated feature produced from the material, something that would rival Sleeping Beauty.
I heard rumors through Studio Gossip Central (otherwise known as Pete Young’s room) that the studio didn’t want to leave the writing assignment to some green nincompoop (me),
and was seriously considering bringing in an experienced British screenwriter.
In the meantime, Vance Gerry had been recalled from an extended leave that he’d requested.
He was asked to go through the books and put together “beat storyboards” that would visually outline plot, action, and various set pieces.
Mr. Gerry, on top of being a brilliant storyboard artist and designer, was also fast.
(Story veteran Ed Gombert, no slouch in the talent and speed categories himself, once said to me, “Vance gets more boarded in a day than most of us get up in a week.”)
True to form, Mr. Gerry quickly had a rough continuity in hand and was pinning story sketches to corkboards at a merry clip.
Like I had done in the early days of The Fox and the Hound, I showed up uninvited to offer gag ideas, character ideas, and bits of business. Vance liked a few of them and worked them in.
It wasn’t long before he had a first pass up on boards and was showing the results to Ron Miller and a chosen few from the animation department’s hierarchy.
Vance had taken sections from the first couple of books, set up his principle players (Taran the pig keeper, Dalben the wizard, Eilonwy the Princess, Fflewddur Fllamm the minstrel,
and Gurgi the hairy little beast) along with supporting cast, and set the plot in motion with his usual flair and efficiency.
He made the villain—the fearsome Horned King—into a big-bellied Viking who had a red beard,
fiery temper, and steel helmet with two large horns. Vance thought having a bigger-than-life villain with an explosive personality would get the most out of the scenes he was in,
and was a sure-fire way to enliven the feature.
Pete Young was the next board artist onto the project,, and sequences started to get fleshed out. The front office finalized its deal with writer Rosemary Anne Sisson to write a script.
I was disheartened that I wasn’t the scribe chosen for the job,
but I could understand management’s position: They weren’t going to let some novice be the lead writer on a project that was going to be done in wide-screen 70 mm (the first since Sleeping Beauty)
and would cost way more than the twelve million bucks shelled out for The Fox and the Hound. Ms. Sisson had a distinguished track record and pedigree. I had a dog picture.
The first director assigned to The Black Cauldron was CalArts alumnus John Musker, who had until then worked on the first floor with the likes of Henry Selick,
Bill Kroyer, Jerry Rees, and other CalArts grads. John was assigned a couple of sequences inside the first act, and went to work expanding them."
No mention of Mel Shaw and Burny Mattinson?
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