Just to refresh your memory...
[quote="Elton John"]And tlk wasn't going to be pg because the previous disney pg rated film, the black cauldren was such a financial disaster that it almost closed down walt disney animation studios. That or oliver and company, I forget which was almost the straw that broke the camels back.[/quote]
It was
The Black Cauldron.
[quote="Elton John"]They needed the levity in the movie to keep things from getting too depressing and away from a pg rating. TLK wasn't a sure success as many of you know that disney had little faith in the movie and placed a lot of their veteran animators on pocahontas. I forgot who but a disney exec questioned the film by saying 'nobody is going to watch this' or something close to that.[/quote]
I just wanted to tackle a couple of misconceptions. True, the Disney executives (outside of Thomas Schumacher) didn't have too much faith in it during its early beginnings, but when the teaser trailer of "Circle of Life" was released in November 1993, it was when some of the staff working on the film admitted there was something special about it and the executives were impressed like
Dick Cook was. Around the time of its release,
Disney gave it the same promotional rollout and release plans that
Beauty and the Beast and
Aladdin had.
And some veteran supervising animators went to work on
Lion King which included Mark Henn, Andreas Deja, James Baxter, Ruben Aquino, and even Nik Ranieri was working on the film until he moved over to work on
Pocahontas. Henn and Aquino managed to work on both films in Florida. Lastly, that was Jeffrey Katzenberg who famously talked down on
Lion King in favor of
Pocahontas.