Lloyd Alexander's Unused Script

Excerpts from Didier Ghez' interview with The Black Cauldron's co Director Richard Rich

from the book Walt's People Volume 2

"DG: The Black Cauldron took 10 years to produce. What were the greatest ideas that were discarded through production?

RR: The story went in many different directions. They even had the writer, Lloyd Alexander come in and do a screenplay. They brought in another writer to do a screenplay But with Disney's animation approach at that time, the storyboard was key. It was more of a collaborative effort.

        Then Pete Young took that one and went to a room by himself. Pete died when he was still on that project. He was just a young guy in his late twenties.

He went in and brought lots of things and got people excited.

but [the challenge] was more in trying to find the approach to that film and to that story that would meet the Disney qualifications. The conflict was always about how far to push the darkness in it. in attempt to find a middle ground, it was probably too scary for kids but not too scary enough for the teenage market. I don't know that the balance was ever found, but it was an attempt to move off of the sweetness but still having the sweet qualities of Disney in there, with a love story, and Gurgi."

"DG: Why did you end up up not using the script by Lloyd Alexander?

RR: As often the case, animation is such a visual thing. The Lloyd Alexander script was extremely long, too long, Condensing the story into a seventy-five minute story was extremely difficult for him."