Doogal (Butch Hartman version)

***Doogal*** is a 2006 animated film which is a US dub of the 2005 film ***The Magic Roundabout*** and was considered one of the worst animated movies ever made, Originally Butch Hartman (creator of Nickelodeon's *The Fairly OddParents*, *Danny Phantom*, *T.U.F.F. Puppy*, *Bunsen is a Beast* and Pocket.watch's *HobbyKids Adventures*) was chosen as the lead writer of this version by Harvey Weinstein, so the film was re-cut, re-written and re-dubbed by Harvey Weinstein as he revealed in a 2017 interview during the 2017 scandal surrounding and following Harvey Weinstein during the ***MeToo*** and ***Time's Up*** movement.

## Plot

The US release would have been the same as the original 2005 version, but with an all new live-action frame story similar to *The Princess Bride* of it being a bedtime story being read to a child.

## Cast

* Robbie Williams as Dougal (spelled Doogal)
* Kylie Minogue as Florence
* Tom Baker as Zeebad
* Jim Broadbent as Brian
* Lee Evans as Train
* Joanna Lumley as Ermintrude
* Bill Nighy as Dylan
* Ray Winstone as Soldier Sam
* Ian McKellen as Zebedee

## Why It Was Cancelled

1. According to Hartman in a 2017 interview on YouTube during the Weinstein scandal, the live-action segments were later scrapped and rejected due to budget costs and was replaced with narration from Judi Dench and the film now being re-cut, re-written and re-dubbed.
2. According to Hartman, the original U.S. movie poster had his name and his production company Billionfold Inc. on it, until they were forced to be removed in later posters in copyright favour of both Pathé and Action Synthese's credits.

## Results

* Butch Hartman claimed that he wrote another original script that was scrapped and was re-written and re-recorded without his consent by producer Harvey Weinstein and his distribution and production company The Weinstein Company with a screenplay by *Hoodwinked!* co-director Cory Edwards. Only 3% of his material made it into the final cut. (approximately only two lines of dialogue: “We must make it back to the **carousel** right away!” and “The **carousel**!” and just some bits of his original lines).
* The final version by Harvey Weinstein had an overabundance of pop culture references and flatulence jokes, neither of which were presumably present in Hartman's script or the original version of the film.
* Cory Edwards, co-director of *Hoodwinked!*, was responsible for the new screenplay of the US dub and the pop culture references and flatulence jokes involved in Harvey Weinstein's version of the film.
* Doogal was a critical and commercial failure.
* The American failure of the film led Action Synthese to strictly only produce TV shows like the reboot of The Magic Roundabout (which only aired for a limited time on Netflix in America, Europe & UK) since then, and, 7 years after Doogal was released, the company was subject to bankruptcy causing their planned films (*A second Magic Roundabout film*, an adaptation of Xilam television animated series *Space Goofs* and John Boorman's animated adaptation of *The Wizard of Oz*) to be cancelled and also led to Pathé UK giving up UK distribution rights in 2009 after the American failure of *Doogal* in 2006 and later on the UK failure of the Paris Hilton movie *The Hottie and the Nottie* in 2008 with two of their distributed films *Chatroom* and *Dead Man Running* being transferred to the now defunct Revolver Entertainment and since then only produced biographical films they produced such as *The Iron Lady*, *Philomena*, *Pride*, *Florence Foster Jenkins* and *Judy* but only distributed Pedro Almodóvar's films in the U.K. since then up until their shut down in November 2023.
* Doogal has been considered as one of the worst animated films ever made.
* Butch Hartman has since disowned and regretted the film after most of the script was recut, rewritten and re-recorded by Harvey Weinstein without his permission.
* Both The Weinstein Company has since been shut down in 2018, and its division Dimension Films was sold to Lantern Entertainment, following the Harvey Weinstein scandal and has since both reformed into Lantern Entertainment and Spyglass Media Group in July 2018 (the same year as the shutdown of The Weinstein Company).