The project that became The Devil and Max Devlin began not as a family‑brand fantasy but as a 1973 Hammer Films horror treatment by veteran genre writer Jimmy Sangster called The Fairytale Man—envisioned as a Vincent Price vehicle about a dead actor collecting children’s souls. When producer Harold Cohen couldn’t raise financing the project went into turnaround; Sangster reclaimed the rights and ultimately sold the story to Walt Disney Productions. In Burbank, studio head Ron W. Miller brought in Mary Rodgers to reconceive Sangster’s darker outline into something the Disney lot could release: the horror beats were softened into a Faustian comedy, the theatrical/musical setting was swapped for bike racing and pop music, and the title was made explicit to signal a moral tale rather than straight horror. The transaction—an outright turnaround and retooling from British horror to American family studio fare—illustrates how, even in the late studio era, projects could be reborn under new corporate imperatives, with original creators left with a story credit and little control. Sangster later expressed wry consolation about sharing credit with Richard Rodgers’ daughter, but the behind‑the‑scenes tale remains a classic example of studio rebranding and control over narrative lineage.
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1970s–1980s
From Hammer Horror to Disney Satire: The Strange Turnaround of Jimmy Sangster’s 'Fairytale Man'
Jimmy Sangster / The Devil and Max Devlin / 1970s–1980s
The project that became The Devil and Max Devlin began not as a family‑brand fantasy but as a 1973 Hammer Films horror treatment by veteran genre writer Jimmy Sangster called The Fairytale Man—envisioned as a Vincent Price vehicle about a dead actor collecting children’s souls. When producer Harold Cohen couldn’t raise financing the project went into turnaround; Sangster reclaimed the rights and ultimately sold the story to Walt Disney Productions. In Burbank, studio head Ron W. Miller brought in Mary Rodgers to reconceive Sangster’s darker outline into something the Disney lot could release: the horror beats were softened into a Faustian comedy, the theatrical/musical setting was swapped for bike racing and pop music, and the title was made explicit to signal a moral tale rather than straight horror. The transaction—an outright turnaround and retooling from British horror to American family studio fare—illustrates how, even in the late studio era, projects could be reborn under new corporate imperatives, with original creators left with a story credit and little control. Sangster later expressed wry consolation about sharing credit with Richard Rodgers’ daughter, but the behind‑the‑scenes tale remains a classic example of studio rebranding and control over narrative lineage.
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