Disney's Chicken Little 20th Anniversary
In 2001, sometime after the release
of Disney’s 2000 animated comedy, The Emperor’s New Groove, director
Mark Dindal soon thought of the idea for his next feature film, Chicken
Little. The story started as a classic that had different versions of it.
The basic plot is about a chicken that was hit in the head by an acorn and
thought that the sky was falling and caused mass hysteria. In 1943, Walt Disney
adapted story into a short film that acted as a parable for World War II and
was to teach the audience to think for themselves and not believe idle rumors
and propaganda.
Since Mark had recently become a father, he thought that the story could
work as a father-child story. In the initial version, the lead character was to
be a female chicken that was constantly worried about something bad happening.
This caused issues between her and her father. Because of this, she wanted to
build up her confidence and joined a summer camp called Camp Yesyoucan to help
her achieve that. But Chicken Little soon discovered an evil plan by a literal
wolf in sheep’s clothing to eat the entire town. This version was fully written
and storyboarded and partially cast but then-CEO Michael Eisner decided that
this “wasn’t working”. In his mind, if the lead character was a male instead,
he would be easily made fun for that and would have something to fight against.
And Mark Dindal and producer, Randy Fulmer, went along with the request. It was
also decided, at the behest of executive David Stainton, to completely rewrite
the story. While it kept the leads character’s fractured relationship with his
father, the story became about stopping an alien invasion. Even so, the
executives kept on sending endless notes to the filmmakers.
Halfway through production, it was decided that the film should be done
in computer animation instead of traditional animation. As any Disney fan and
historian would know, the era of the 2000s was a rough time for Disney Animation
with a lot of films that either underperformed (Atlantis: The Lost Empire)
or that tanked at the box office (Treasure Planet). While Lilo &
Stitch (2002) was a hit, in the minds of the executives, the problem wasn’t
the stories, even though in reality it was, it that they were still using 2D
animation when their rival DreamWorks decided to abandon 2D in favor of 3D. So,
a lot of 2D animators were either fired or trained to work in 3D. Chicken
Little was Disney’s second computer animated film and their first fully computer
animated film since their first attempt, Dinosaur (2000), was a mixture
of 3D characters with live action backgrounds. For the animation of this project,
it was decided to make it more cartoony like the classic Disney Goofy cartoons.
This in this case, the principle of squash and stretch was used extensively for
Chicken Little.
Chicken Little was released on November 4, 2005, to mixed
reviews. While the animation was praised, the story, the mean-spirited
characters, and especially the lead character’s father was the center of criticism.
While it didn’t double its budget at the domestic box office, it was still the
success Disney was desperate for at the time. Today, the film is considered by
many to be the “worst” Disney animated film and on par with The Black
Cauldron (1985). It was also called Disney’s poor answer to DreamWorks’ Shrek
but without the charm. But Chicken Little did help Disney see that they
needed to step up their output and they did when John Lasseter took charge of Disney
animation the year after. What’s interesting is that Chicken Little was
the last mixed reviewed Disney animated film until Wish in 2023 but that’s
a different story.
After the film, Mark Dindal would move to DreamWorks to develop the soon
cancelled project Me and My Shadow and went on to direct 2024’s The Garfield
Movie. But on the subject of Chicken Little, Mark has expressed his
wish that he went with the first version of the story before Michael Eisner interfered.
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