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Today, The Emperor's New Groove is seen as an underrated comedic classic in the
Disney vault. But to Disney, The Emperor's New
Groove will always be remembered as just a deeply troubled production. So much so, Disney tried to erase an entire behind the scenes documentary about the making of The Emperor's New Groove from existence.
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Woo, yeah! Ooh, look at me and my bad self. Uh-huh. Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh
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This is The Emperor's New Groove. Today, it's seen as an underrated comedic classic in the Disney vault
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But to Disney, it will always be remembered as just a deeply troubled production
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In fact, it was so troubled that they tried to erase its behind-the-scenes documentary from existence
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What? A llama? He's supposed to be dead! Yeah, weird. The Emperor's New Groove began its life in 1994 as the cherished pet project of Roger Allers
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Having co-directed The Lion King alongside Rob Minkoff, Allers' name became synonymous with ambitious narratives
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done through the medium of serious, award-worthy animation, which is exactly what The Emperor's New Groove was supposed to be
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Tentatively titled The Kingdom of the Sun, Allers was heavily inspired by South American myths
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and Anthony Hope's 1894 novel The Prisoner of Zendap. His story was that of Pacha, a young llama herder who teaches the arrogant Emperor Menko
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how to lead with humility and kindness. And there's Menko, the arrogant self-centered prince
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I can't believe I've been here this long and no one's kissed my feet
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After Menko's evil advisor and her sentient rock minion turn him into a llama
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Pacha and Menko have to work to foil their advisor's plan to destroy the sun
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The voice cast consisted of Owen Wilson as Pacha, David Spade as Menko
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Eartha Kitt as the evil advisor Yzma, and Laura Prepon as his love interest
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And to top it all off, the film also would have included a soundtrack by Sting
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Allers pitched the movie to Disney's then-CEO, Michael Eisner, who apparently went as far as to say that the Kingdom of the Sun
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has all the elements of a classic Disney film. It officially went into production in late 1994
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with no forecasted release date. All was well for Allers, but we know how this story ends
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and it doesn include his name in the director slot of the end credits This is not good By 1997 Disney was taking a look at their animated feature films and they weren happy with what they saw Pocahontas and
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The Hunchback of Notre Dame had both been billed as serious awards-bait movies, yet all the company
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had to show for it was disappointing box office numbers and countless articles on the controversial
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nature of their cartoons. Eisner and the powers that be decided to pivot to more light-hearted
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fare. As detailed in the documentary The Sweatbox, this change would ultimately prove disastrous for
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the Kingdom of the Sun. Using the same name as the on-air-conditioned screening room at Disney's
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Burbank Studio, The Sweatbox was originally supposed to be a simple making-of documentary
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but like The Screening Room, which had a reputation for being the place where creative
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projects go to die, The Sweatbox documentary ended up being more than director Trudy Stiler
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bargained for. Screening the movies like this is having someone chop your hands off
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and pull your pants down in front of a crowd. And you stand there incapable of pulling your pants back up
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The Sweatbox introduces us to Mark Dindle, who was brought on to co-direct by producer Randy Fulmer
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As a relatively unknown artist and writer on several Disney and Warner Brothers projects
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Dindle brought a fresh-faced perspective to the production. The problem was that this fresh perspective was directly opposed to Aller's own goals for the film
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Their warring ideas made for a chaotic creative process that left everyone involved reeling
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From the animators to their big name musician to the actors. David Reynolds, a writer for Conan, was brought on for the screenplay
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The comedic elements were punched up. The characters were tweaked. The voice cast was only given a few pages at a time as they were being written
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And Sting was writing songs for sequences that were barely past the concept stage
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I was writing songs in the dark, really, based on sort of hearsay of what the film was going to be
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There was no hard script. Through it all, nothing was actually getting done
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By 1998 the film was in real danger of being cancelled However thanks to promotional deals already in place the House of Mouse was now keen on forcing the thing through by the summer of the year 2000 With the pressure mounting to
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show some tangible progress, Allers and Dindle were set against one another. They split the team
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into two groups and were forced to pitch their reworked versions of the movie to Disney's higher
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ups. Ultimately, it was Dindle's team who won over the hearts and minds of the producers
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Not this. This. Not this. Winner. Loser. After four years of work, the Kingdom of the Sun was dead
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In its place was a road trip buddy comedy that used its South American setting as little more than a two-dimensional backdrop
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Due to the scope of the project, the team was granted an extra six months to work through it all
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despite that original summer of 2000 deadline that forced the change in the first place
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Finding the new direction too painful to continue with, Alers voluntarily left the project at the end of 1998
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You know, I try and I try. There's just no respect for anyone with vision
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That's it. There's just nothing I can do about it. The movie was now being overseen by Dindal and producer Randy Fulmer
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and practically everything needed to be overhauled. Pacha was aged up, so Owen Wilson was replaced by the more fatherly John Goodman
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The sentient rock minion was turned into a goofy human voice by Patrick Warburton
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Both love interests were cut. David Spade was elevated to main character status as the newly named Emperor Kuzco
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And while they tried to rework Sting's contributions, his songs were removed
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save for the only musical sequence in the entire film as well as the end credits song
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He found the whole thing frustrating and stepped away from the project. There's something intrinsically faulty with this film
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and I find it very difficult to continue working on something that goes against my beliefs
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A full script was never completed. The writers and voice actors were all working with multiple versions of largely unconnected pages that were only loosely strung together and jammed into place in editing
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They hired and subsequently lost a composer before settling on John Debney
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The team was practically laying the tracks as the train pulled into the station but the movie was finished It premiered on December 10 2000 as The Emperor New Groove and it bombed
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The movie was an embarrassing box office flop that would only find its footing a year later
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when it became the best-selling DVD of 2001. Six years of messy development notwithstanding, The Emperor's New Groove actually is a good movie
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It stands apart stylistically from the other Disney animated films of the era
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Its humor is sharp, and there's a warmth to its message that shines in some unexpected ways
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Today, it's a cold classic that only grows more beloved every year. It's a happy ending for the movie, director Mark Dindle, and Disney
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But remember, these are not the only characters in the story. This story's about me, not him
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Okay, you got it? Alright, we're gonna move ahead. Sorry to slow you down. Motivated purely by their bottom line
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Disney pressured Roger Allers to upend his movie based on the whims of an ever-changing market
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In an interview from 2014, he said, I put four years of my heart and energy into that one
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They kept just enough of my elements that I can never produce my original vision or story elsewhere
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So Allers had his movie ripped away from him, and the only proof that it ever existed remains in a half-buried documentary
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The Sweatbox really highlights how downright cynical a lot of the creative process is at Disney's animation studio
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which was not lost on the executives. They refused to include the sweatbox as part of the DVD features and did their best to silence the film completely
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While it did have a few showings in 2002, they mostly succeeded in shutting it down
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That is, until it was posted online in 2012 and has been circulating the internet ever since
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What's the title? The Emperor's New Groove. While The Emperor's New Groove will continue to be seen as a stellar movie by many
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it should be acknowledged that it steamrolled over something just as good, maybe even better
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Kind of like a family home being demolished and replaced by a gaudy water park
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Booyah! Welcome to Kuzkotopia, my ultimate summer getaway, complete with water slide