The Black Cauldron

The Black Cauldron is an animated feature film produced by Walt Disney Productions

## *The Black Cauldron*

### Directed by

Ted Berman
Richard Rich

### Written by

Loyd Alexander (Book)
Ted Berman
Vance Gerry
Joe Hale
David Jonas
Roy Morita
Richard Rich
Art Stevens
Al Wilson
Peter Young
Rosemary Anne Sisson and Roy Edward Disney (additional dialogue)

### Produced by

Joe Hale
Ron Miller

## Development

According to Michael Peraza, Jr., Disney showed this movie to the public at the studio theater, to gather their reactions to the rough cut of this movie. But the reactions of the audience were mostly negative, due to the dark content of this movie. So some scenes were cut. These included

## Reception

The Black Cauldron is considered one of the worst entries in the Disney Animated Canon (along with *Home on the Range* and *Chicken Little)*. Upon release, it proved to be a disaster for the Walt Disney Company, not just the animation department. It wasn't just its unusually dark feel and nature that disappointed audiences, but also the awkward and uneven cuts and transitions and lack of enough information caused by the cuts during production.

## Trivia

* The first Disney animated film that's not a musical to not contain any songs, neither performed by characters nor in the background.
* The film received no video releases until 1998, due to its dark content.
* This was the first Walt Disney movie to feature the "classic" Walt Disney Pictures logo: the white castle and text over a blue field. This logo would be used until the new CGI logo was introduced with Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006).
* This movie was Walt Disney Pictures' first full length animated movie to be filmed in widescreen format, as well as in the Super Technirama 70 widescreen 70mm film process, since Sleeping Beauty (1959). Movies released in-between involved matting of the top and bottom of the filmed image in order to make a widescreen image suitable for movie theaters.
* When the Horned King activates the power of the Black Cauldron, the sound of the NASA space shuttle's solid rocket booster being ready fired was used.
* This was the first and last movie since The Jungle Book (1967), where the old multi-plane cameras were brought briefly out of retirement (with a few improvements this time). New technologies, such as computer graphics imagery, now available to all studios, have made multi-plane photography obsolete.
* Contrary to popular belief, Disney did not try to bury this movie after it failed at the box office. In 1990, Disney test-marketed a reissue of the film under the title "Taran and the Magic Cauldron," but it never received a wide release. The test markets Disney chose for this attempted re-release were Portland, Oregon; Salem, Oregon; Madison, Wisconsin; and Las Vegas, Nevada. Disney re-issued picture books based on the movie around that same time, and even made some "Black Cauldron" merchandise.
* Ralph Bakshi was approached to be involved with this movie in 1979 after the success of his own fantasy film Wizards (1977), and his animated adaptation of The Lord of the Rings (1978). He turned it down, believing his style is far too mature for a Disney movie for family entertainment.
* According to the Summer 1985 issue of "Disney News Magazine", over 2.5 million total drawings were used: 1,000 conceptual, 75,000 story sketches, 22,000 layouts, 576,000 animators' drawings, 1,036,800 in-between drawings, 345,600 assistant animators' drawings, and 460,800 painted cels. In all, it took 400 gallons of paint, 15,000 pencils, 300 erasers, 400 paint brushes, 1,165 different hues and colors, and over 34 miles of film stock.

## External Links and Sources

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088814/?ref\_=nv\_sr\_srsg\_0

https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/The\_Black\_Cauldron

https://insidethemagic.net/2020/08/the-black-cauldron-ne1/