Credit: DisneyThe Walt Disney Company currently has a mania for sequels despite CEO Bob Iger admitting as recently as December that “we have made too many.” Despite that (and to be fair, Iger also said that the company was not making any promises to stop), this week’s momentous Disney earnings call revealed the future of the company, and it is a whole bunch of sequels.
The upcoming list of Disney sequels so far includes Moana 2 (which seems to have been retrofit from an in-development Disney+ streaming series), Toy Story 5 (which even Tim Allen seems a bit bummed about), Zootopia 2, and Frozen 3 (and probably 4, too). Those are all just from a single announcement from the top brass at Disney, who will no doubt be watching and waiting to see if the audiences who didn’t come out to see Lightyear (2022) or Wish (2023) want to see the further adventures of Judy Hopps instead.
In many ways, it is unsurprising that Disney would take the sequel route at this point. Although the Mouse House is still one of the most powerful and iconic media companies in the world, it is impossible not to notice that it has been slipping in recent years. The company’s 2023 box office performance was rated the worst of any major studio, and for the first time in years, Disney did not top the overall global grosses, losing the crown to Universal Pictures.
Related: ‘Toy Story 5’ is the Most Unnecessary Disney Sequel
As such, it makes sense that Disney would retreat to the comparative safety of tried-and-true IP, while at the same time slowing things down with Marvel, rolling out a few new Star Wars movies, and propping up a new hit show as the golden boy of Disney+.
But it wasn’t always like this. There was a time when the Walt Disney Company took a look at the idea of a sequel to a popular film and actually decided against making it, whether because it wanted to try something innovative and visionary, a new executive decided to clear the slate of anything that preceded him (*cough cough* John Lasseter), or just because the script was way, way too weird.
We’ve drawn up a list of the Disney sequels that never actually got made for one reason or another, and, like Uatu the Watcher, we ask you: what if?
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‘Pinocchio 2’
Because Pinocchio (1940) was a huge critical success and won Disney its first Academy Awards (for Best Music, Original Score and for Best Music, Original Song), it is easy to forget that it was actually a huge box office flop when it came out. That’s not entirely the fault of the little wooden boy; World War II was raging, and the lucrative European and Asian box office markets were not exactly hopping at the time.
Pinocchio has rightly come to be seen as one of the pinnacles of early Disney animation, and, eventually, the company got the idea that maybe it should do something about a sequel. Unfortunately, it set out to do so in perhaps the worst way possible.
In the late 1990s, Disney was riding a wave of cheap, direct-to-video (and then DVD) sequels that were profitable, but not respected. When John Lasseter returned to the fold and was appointed head of the newly restructured Walt Disney Animation, he put a stop to all that, including the in-development Pinocchio 2.
Reportedly, the sequel was intended to be made with budget CGI rather than traditional animation and was going to be about a now-human Pinocchio traveling through the world and learning why sometimes things are unfair, which seems like a real bummer. Given that Pinocchio has already seen his friends transformed into screaming donkeys and enslaved by a guy with a mustache, he probably has a good grasp on the unfairness of life already.
‘Musicana’
Much like Pinocchio, Fantasia was released in 1940 and saw its commercial fortunes severely hampered by the massive global war that was happening. Unlike Pinocchio, it is questionable whether the film’s heady combination of classical music, abstract animation, and Mickey Mouse almost drowning in mop water would have enthralled audiences all that much anyway.
Despite that, Fantasia was a towering achievement in animation history, successfully merging live-action and cartoons and pioneering huge leaps forward in sound technology of the time. It was also a personal passion project of Walt Disney himself, so it is not that surprising that it would be put on the official “sequels” list at some point.
The follow-up, which was tentatively titled Musicana, was apparently intended to continue in the same musical vignette style as Fantasia. This time, the film would involve folk stories taken from around the world, including a Finnish battle between gods, a Hans Christian Andersen story (predating The Little Mermaid by decades) featuring Mickey Mouse, and a South American tale featuring an anthropomorphic bird romance.
Intriguingly, two of the stories that were to be included in Musicana may have resurfaced in other forms. A planned segment titled “By the Bayou” reportedly involved frogs and jazz, which may have informed The Princess and the Frog (2009) over the decades, while a take on “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” may have informed the creation of Aladdin (1992).
Unfortunately, the film was canceled because of tightening finances in favor of The Black Cauldron (1985), one of the biggest box office disasters in Disney history. Nice move, guys.
‘Treasure Planet 2’
Treasure Planet (2002) was one of Disney’s most ambitious films in decades, fusing traditional animation, CGI, thrilling adventure storytelling, a killer voice cast, and the talents of co-directors John Musker and Ron Clements. Despite having proven themselves with The Great Mouse Detective (1986), The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, and Hercules (1997), Musker and Clements still had to beg for years to get to make Treasure Planet, a sci-fi update of the classic pirate story Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson.
Naturally, Treasure Planet bombed hard. To date, the film is still one of the most expensive box office flops ever made, which meant plans for an immediate direct-to-DVD sequel and subsequent Disney Channel series were dead in the water. It didn’t even need John Lasseter’s disapproval. That’s how bad it bombed.
The unproduced sequel had already signed on Willem Dafoe to portray a new space-pirate villain named Iron Beard, who would be trying to break criminals out of the Botany Bay Prison Asteroid, which certainly feels like a Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) reference. Treasure Planet 2 would also have seen the heroic cabin boy Jim Hawkins enrolling in the Royal Interstellar Academy and struggling to fit in, finding a love interest, and probably dueling Ironbeard at some point.
‘The Nightmare Before Christmas 2’
Most Disney sequels get canceled due to commercial underperformance, because the audience doesn’t demand it, or John Lasseter said so. The story is different with The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), which did decently at the box office and has since become a veritable gold mine of Jack Skellington merchandise for Disney. This time around, Tim Burton said no.
While Henry Selick may have actually directed Nightmare, Tim Burton came up with the original concept and characters and thus seems to have an iron grip on the future of a potentially lucrative franchise, which must drive Disney nuts. The company has repeatedly tried to make a sequel (including swapping out the iconic stop-motion animation for CGI, naturally), only to be shot down by Burton time and time again.
The closest Nightmare fans have gotten is The Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie’s Revenge, a 2004 video game that Burton allowed to get made and even consulted on. But, even despite Henry Selick being up for making a prequel, Burton has been firm: he just doesn’t want it to happen.
‘Roger Rabbit II: The Toon Platoon’
And now we’ve come to the epic struggle to make a sequel to Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), one of the greatest achievements in animation history, not just for Disney, but any studio anywhere.
Unlike some movies on this list, Who Framed Roger Rabbit was a colossal financial success, grossing over $351 million at the box office and winning three Academy Awards (plus one special one for the work of animator Richard Williams). Although director Robert Zemeckis had gone far over budget and shooting schedule, it was no surprise that Disney wanted a sequel. Then things got complicated.
First, producer Steven Spielberg hired a then-unknown J. J. Abrams to write a script, which was completely thrown away. Then, screenwriter Nat Mauldin was recruited to come up with a prequel set during World War II that would involve Roger Rabbit searching for his birth parents while his future wife Jessica is forced to make pro-Nazi propaganda and the whole thing turns into a Dirty Dozen-like (1967) commando mission behind fascist enemy lines, but, y’know, with cartoons.
While the sheer insanity of that premise would seem to make it a non-starter, it was actually Steven Spielberg decided that he no longer wanted to make movies that depicted Nazis goofily in the wake of Schindler’s List (1993). So, it was eventually retooled as a prequel about Roger becoming a big Broadway star, complete with new songs from Disney Legend Alan Menken. Test footage was actually shot for this one, until someone predictably decided that it should be CGI (as always), and Disney hated it.
Since then, the great Bob Hoskins has sadly passed away, the idea of a Roger Rabbit sequel has dimmed, and all that remains is Robert Zemeckis occasionally popping up and saying he totally is going to do it someday. Sure, Mr. Zemeckis. Sure.
Also, Roger’s dad was going to be revealed to be Bugs Bunny.
Which of these lost Disney sequels do you want to see most? Tell us in the comments below!