(on the DVD of Don Hann's documentary Waking Sleeping Beauty
Randy Cartwrtight's 1983 Disney Studio's Home Movies. This footage is in the bonus features section) (Randy Cartwright was going to say farwell to Disney before he went off to Japan.)
Richard Rich : "You're going to Japan?"
Randy: "Yep."
Rosemary Anne Sisson: "Oh, no kidding."
Richard Rich : "Say a few words about your picture for posterity while we're here. It will be out in 1985."
Randy: "Hey, so will Nemo"
Randy is referring to TMS' Little Nemo (one of the animated features that have long production histories.)
Richard Rich : "Is that right?"
Randy: "Hey!"
Richard Rich : "There we go. Then we'll see, Randy."
Randy: "Yes."
Rosemary Anne Sisson: "The Black Cauldron is gonna be the best picture that Disney ever made."
Randy: " And Little Nemo will be the best picture that Japan ever made."
time stamp 4:01 in the video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8KB6bKQqGU
1984 article about the then new Disney leaders. Frank Wells Michael Eisner, Jeffery Katzenberg.
also in this article Richard Berger who was hired by former Disney CEO Ron Miller had resigned, here is something interesting: “Disney’s animated feature for 1985, the $25 million medieval fable “The Black Cauldron,” is not one of Mr. Berger’s projects. Planning for “The Black Cauldron,” the most complex and expensive animated film ever made by Disney, began more than six years ago.“
Excerpt from Disney Film Behind Schedule August 10 1978
by Aljean Harmetz
by Aljean Harmetz
Los Angeles - "The Black Cauldron" Walt Disney"s $10 million animated film scheduled for 1980, is four years behind schedule.
It will not be completed until Christmas 1984, because the new crop of young animators the studio has spent six years acquiring are not yet competent to handle in complexities.
"The Black Cauldron" which is based on Lloyd Alexander's interpretations of medieval Welsh mythology,
will be replaced in 1980 by a simpler and easier movie about animal friendship, "The Fox and the Hound."
"It will not be completed until Christmas 1984,"
If you watched the classic Disney Channel documentary Backstage at Disney (1983) hosted by John Culhane,
John mentions that The Black Cauldron was set to be released in 1985
an article from
Cinefantastique Vol 08 No.1 (Winter 1978) magazine page 35
Disney Sword & Sorcery by Dan Scapperotti
"The Black Cauldron is on the drawing boards and Walt Disney Productions
as the cartoon feature to follow in production after completion of the Fox and the Hound, currently in the works. Property is an original Sword and Sorcery fantasy in the tradition of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy, and is part of an effort at Disney to change the studio's "For Kids Only" image.
Disney's roots are the strongest in the animated cartoon field, but the studio has seen its pool of creative artists dwindle as the pioneering animators, the veterans who created such classics as Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs and Bambi, retire and leave the field. A shortage of Qualified animators as well as the tremendous labor costs involved in their work forced Ralph Bakshi to depend almost entirly on rotoscoping for Lord of the Rings. Disney, however, has reinstitued and training program for young animators, began by Walt Disney in the early thirties, to assure the qualified manpower necesary for their animated film program.
Preproduction art for The Black Cauldron indicates that much of the film will rely on a pervading atmosphere of horror and the mystic arts, with forboding settings reminiscent of the studio's early cartoon work such as The Skeleton Dance and The Old Mill and the Evil Queen's dungeon in Snow White. The cauldron of the title is in the possession of the evil Horned King who emerses his vanquished enemies in it to transform them into invincible, soulless Cauldron Born Warriors. With this army of the dead the Horned King plans to conquer the peaceful land of Prydain. He is opposed buy Dallben, a wise enchanter and Taran, his young ward.
The Black Cauldron will entirely be the work of an new generation of Disney artists and technicians. The Studio's previous cartoon feature, the imme4nsely popular The Rescuers, was the last to depend on the talents of the veteran animators. Eric Larson, a 45 year Disney veteran, is in charge of the studio's training program for new animators. From thousands of applications received for their training program, less than 100 were selected for Disney apprenticeship, and only 45 completed the full course. The first effort to feature solely the work of the new animators is The Small One, a 25 minute featurette to be released this December with Pinocchio. It's Christmas story tells of a young boy in ancient Nazareth who is force to sell his beloved donkey.
The Fox and The Hound won't be released until 1980. The lengthy production schedule reflects the pains taken for fuller, more fluid animation and an attention to detail for which Disney is famous. The work begins on the animation of The Black Cauldron, which won't see release until 1984."
The Fox and the Hound was planned to be completed/released in 1984,
then revised to be completed/released in 1980
then bumped up the next year due to Don Bluth and his crew leaving.
and it affected the productions of The Fox and The Hound (1981) and The Black Cauldron) when they left in September of 1979.
Excerpt from: 11 Animators Quit Disney, Form Studio
"LOS ANGELES, Sept. 19— A severe blow was struck at Walt Disney Productions’ animation department last weekend when 11 members — over 15 percent of the department — resigned to form a rival company.
As a result, the animated feature on which they were working, “The Fox and the Hound,” may be delayed nearly six months beyond its anticipated Christmas 1980 release."
The Fox and The Hound was released on July 10, 1981
The Black Cauldron was announced to be released in the year of 1985 (according to the Walt Disney Productions' annual report from 1982 and the Disney Channel documentary Backstage at Disney from 1983)
from Adam Martinez' Pinterest. "June 1985"? uh what?
