The Troubled History of The Black Cauldron

The fact that the author of the books didn't think the movie was at all similar to his books, yet still was able to enjoy the the story the movie did tell, is honestly one of the most legendary and humble stories I've heard for a while.

It’s weird to think there was a time when movie studios would think “How can we turn five books into one 80-minute movie?” instead of “How can we turn one book into three 150-minute movies?”

Honestly, looking at those shots of the undead soldiers really makes me want a fully cel animated dark fantasy film in that style.

I announced this film in a magazine I edited back in '77, and eventually lost track of what happened to it. Here it is 2023 and I'm just finding out that the film was actually MADE! That's how lost to time it turned out to be!

I will never get tired of Bluth going, "Peace, bitches" and just stealing half the team.

Disney: let’s hire all these new guys to innovate and be creative. Also Disney: we don’t like your innovation and creativity. Let’s ask this old guy what he thinks.

The dark tones of this movie is why it is my favorite Disney animated movie, for me it’s so unique within the Disney genre that it really stands out. And also the story gets me EVERYTIME regardless of my age.

I sometimes think Disney missed a trick in the development of The Black Cauldron in that they could have used it as the springboard for a kind of "Touchstone Pictures" sub-label for their animation. The marketing department could have gone: "No worries, folks, we still have this fun-for-the-whole-family film in development, called The Great Mouse Detective, and parallel to that we're also going to start making some animated films geared towards an older audience." Granted, it would have been better if the first of these mature features had been smaller-scale, cheaper productions, as it would have taken several years time for the audience to warm to them, so a "put all your eggs into a single costly basket" project like The Black Cauldron would still have been a bad idea to go with first. But Disney did manage to find an older audience on tv with Gargoyles for example.

I can see now why J.R.R. Tolkien didn't want Disney to get their hands on The LOTR Trilogy.

Funny how they thought it was too dark and Don Bluth goes on to make dark animated films that did well. Also, I wonder what the movie would have been like if Don and Tim had stayed and were let to have their way.

So the biggest mistake Disney made with Black Cauldron was that they didn't take enough of a risk and did everything they could to avoid violence in a story where violence was unavoidable. Cuts being made to improve pacing is antithetical to animation. You go to see an animation to watch the animation more than anything else. Removing whole bits of animation for anything other than to avoid repitition is a bad excuse.

Eilonwy will forever be one of my favorite Disney characters. The movies themes of finding your strength by stepping into what you want to be, even if it might not work out just really gets me. The hints that she’s simply pretending to be a princess just like Taran is pretending to be a warrior really paint this picture of two kids growing up in a horribly cruel world, leaning on the comforts of fiction to continue on and I think that’s such a subtle and impactful theme I haven’t seen in too many adult oriented movies.

The fact that a Disney movie lost to a Care Bears movie, still makes me laugh to this day.

As a huge fan of the books, I've never loved this movie, but the drama surrounding it is absolutely FASCINATING.

My brother has autism and when he was diagnosed by the doctors, they said the he would never speak. Then one day when he was 4, he started singing the song "Somewhere, Out there" and started saying sentences from Disney movies. Suffice it to say, my sister and I ended up watching a bunch of Disney movies. Then one summer, my brother became obsessed with the Black Cauldron during a summer vacation. He made us watch it every day at least once before we could go out and play. The Black Cauldron is the Disney I have probably seen the most out of any of them, and even though I haven't watched Disney movies for a long time, I still remember it being one of the better Disney cartoons.

I had a chance to interview Lloyd Alexander back in the mid 90s. When I asked him about the movie, he kindly said “well, they did the best they could.” That was the kind of guy he was. Very gentle, very kind, and an excellent writer.

from Joe Hale: Mark, I am amazed at the time and effort this video must have taken you. Well Done.....I was determined to keep the Animation quality up to Disney standards and this film was the training ground for these young animators. the cost reported to me was $25 million. After Eisner was in charge of Disney, he told all the departments to charge their overhead to the TBC as he wanted it to be a loss. The promotional budget was cut from $3 million to $1 million. I don’t think Eisner wanted Ron Miller’s last film to be a success. Ron wanted this film to appeal to teenagers rather than small children as previous Disney films weren’t seem by teenagers.

With Disney’s current obsession with live action remakes, the Chronicles of Prydain would be the only one that makes sense.

If the Black Cauldron was live action and had all the missing cuts (and was still made in the early 80s), I can picture the infamous death scene of the guard like the bad guys in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

I actually teared up at the end of your version. Much better than what we got. I’d say that Disney should hire you, but they’d treat you terribly so keep doing your thing.