Following The Secret of NIMH, Bluth began developing an animated feature adaptation of Beauty and the Beast for Columbia Pictures. A number of scenes and animation tests were produced in 1984, but the project became trapped in a direct corporate collision with Disney, the studio Bluth had left after his 1979 revolt. When Columbia and Bluth learned that Walt Disney Pictures was developing its own adaptation, Columbia canceled the project; the production was officially abandoned in 1989. The episode became an early example of how the major studios’ control over familiar literary and fairy-tale properties could determine which competing animated film reached theaters, even after substantial creative work had already been completed.
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1980s
Columbia Shut Down Bluth’s Beauty and the Beast After Disney Announced Its Own Version
Don Bluth’s Beauty and the Beast / 1980s
Following The Secret of NIMH, Bluth began developing an animated feature adaptation of Beauty and the Beast for Columbia Pictures. A number of scenes and animation tests were produced in 1984, but the project became trapped in a direct corporate collision with Disney, the studio Bluth had left after his 1979 revolt. When Columbia and Bluth learned that Walt Disney Pictures was developing its own adaptation, Columbia canceled the project; the production was officially abandoned in 1989. The episode became an early example of how the major studios’ control over familiar literary and fairy-tale properties could determine which competing animated film reached theaters, even after substantial creative work had already been completed.
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