Cauldron Conundrum Continued...

To catch up on what this is about, check this out...

The 25th animated feature in the official Disney animated films canon, The Black Cauldron continues to be something of a mystery...

The common belief is that The Walt Disney Company almost completely buried The Black Cauldron after its disastrous summer 1985 release. It is true that The Black Cauldron didn't see a theatrical re-release or even a video release for a decade. In 1998, some thirteen years after the film first came out, it was finally released on home video. Heck, the UK got the film on VHS a year before we did. Disney still shows little love for the film, and it has yet to get a Blu-ray release.

Years ago, I had read on a forum (I believe it was on ToonZone, it was a discussion on the legendary "uncut" version of the movie) that Disney actually planned on giving the film a theatrical re-release, albeit in a further edited form. The Black Cauldron was the first Disney animated feature to be given a then-coveted PG rating from the MPAA, and the new management that had taken over when the film was in production did not like that this was a Disney animated feature that set its sights on an older crowd rather than a wide family audience. These heads buried The Black Cauldron after it had flopped at the box office, and supposedly one of the main reasons they did that was because they perceived the movie to be "too dark."

The title for this re-cut version of the movie was a much nicer-sounding Taran and the Magic Cauldron. The re-titling was confirmed in a Cartoon Research article from a few years back by historian Jim Korkis, who also mentioned that Disney tried to re-market the film as The Dark Cauldron... Sometime between the original release and the planned Taran re-release... One day, we shall find out more about that one!

Some merchandise and a poster were made for this possible Taran and the Magic Cauldron re-release.

However, the poster contradicts the claim that Disney re-cut the movie to make it kid-friendly.

The poster bares the PG rating that the movie was originally given in 1985.

A while back, I tried to figure out when Disney was aiming to re-release this film. I had surmised that it would've been sometime around early 1991, nearly 5 1/2 years after the movie's initial release, which lines up with Disney's usual 5-10 year cycle when it came to theatrical re-releases...

But lo and behold... It may have been even earlier...


This is from a Portuguese television program that aired on March 19, 1989... This TV spot-length trailer for the Taran re-release has...

• The pre-1990 Walt Disney Pictures logo, where the line goes inside the "W"
• Mark Elliott's voice over
• There's no voice over for the last 3 seconds of it... Is this where the "Rated PG! Check your local listings!" voice over would be placed?
• Mark also pronounced Taran wrong... On top of that, they have a sound clip of Princess Eilonwy saying his name right...
• Some really questionable sound editing... Why is Taran screaming Fflewddur Fflam's "Heeeeeeelp!" when swinging the magic sword?

Disney must've gotten very close to doing this re-release... And not even four years after the film first came out... But weren't the new heads ashamed of this movie? This very movie was viewed as toxic spillover from the previous administration?

The Taran and the Magic Cauldron re-release ended up happening internationally. Apparently Canada got this re-release as well. That was around 1990-1992.

So the question is... Why so early? What even prompted the re-release?

1989... Disney was still easing into releasing their animated features on home video. The Classics line may have been launched at the end of 1984, but the process of getting all the animated features on video was still a rather slow one. For example, no contemporary animated feature got a video release until The Little Mermaid in spring 1990. The Great Mouse Detective and Oliver & Company didn't come to video until the early-to-mid 1990s. Roy E. Disney held up the releases of particular films, such as Cinderella and Fantasia.

The trailer above is not a home video trailer. If it were, it would not have begun with the Walt Disney Pictures castle logo. So, scratch the idea of Disney preparing to release it on video in 1989. (And disregard any rumor that says otherwise... I accidentally started that AGES AGO. For more info, read this.)

Since Disney wasn't going to give a contemporary animated feature a video release anytime soon, maybe they saw this as a chance to give The Black Cauldron one last chance at making its money back. A lot of Disney animated movies that initially flopped at the box office were saved by re-issues, and maybe, just maybe the then-new regime thought that they could save The Black Cauldron and make it a profitable film... Before giving up on it altogether. For a little while, maybe they genuinely thought they had a chance to give it another whirl.

The re-titling and the rumored further edits to the movie make sense. By early 1989, the executives were certain that Disney feature animation was for young children first and foremost. Of course, anyone entrenched in animation history or Disney's own history would know that Walt Disney aimed his work at no particular target audience. That wasn't Jeffrey Katzenberg's agenda. In many interviews, he made it known that he looked down on Disney's animation. He frequently spoke about how it was children's stuff. It's why he edited The Black Cauldron to begin with...

Before The Black Cauldron was released to theaters, Katzenberg saw a work-in-progress cut and was appalled at the rough violence that the film was going to have. He cut fully-animated and scored sequences from the film at the last minute, and the material that got the axe became the stuff of legend. His reasoning was that a Disney animated feature shouldn't be so dark and violent. Years later, he justified his stance on that, in the 2009 documentary Waking Sleeping Beauty. The cuts didn't matter, The Black Cauldron was still deemed by these executives as a mistake.

It's no surprise that the company would attempt to water the film down even further to help it make money. The Great Mouse Detective and Oliver & Company, the two animated films made and released after The Black Cauldron, fit the mold that Katzenberg wanted. They were kid-friendly and not too rough. The Black Cauldron was supposed to be more in line with the earlier Disney animated classics, particularly film like Pinocchio and Fantasia. Again, not what Katzenberg wanted for the studio's output in the 80s.

So, my theory is... The company briefly thought that marketing the movie as a more kid-friendly fantasy adventure was the way to go. The re-release probably would've occurred sometime in May or June of 1989. Disney had re-released two other animated classics in 1989: The Rescuers in March, and Peter Pan in July. Of course, in November, they debuted The Little Mermaid, the film that had changed everything... There was plenty of room for Taran and the Magic Cauldron. Get that one last shot in there...

Prior to The Black Cauldron's release, what other contemporary Disney animated features were there? Just The Fox and the Hound, and that film first came out in 1981. It got one theatrical re-release in spring 1988, so it also makes sense that a Cauldron re-release would follow in 1989. The Fox and the Hound wasn't released on video until spring 1994.

For whatever reason, the Taran re-release was pulled. If this re-titled version of the movie was indeed tested in select states prior to the intended launch date, then it must not have gone over too well. As such, Disney quietly pulled the re-release. Merchandise still hit the market, but no re-release occurred, and no video release either.

After the release of The Little Mermaid in the autumn, the black sheep film no longer fit in Disney's narrative. The Great Mouse Detective, Oliver & Company, and The Little Mermaid represented an upward climb. They were box office successes that got good marks from critics. (Over the years, Oliver & Company has fallen out of favor, for obvious reasons.)

In promoting Beauty and the Beast in 1991, Disney touted Oliver & Company and The Little Mermaid as a continuation of the classic Disney tradition. Keep in mind, at the domestic box office, Oliver & Company collected the highest gross of any animated feature on in its initial release. The Little Mermaid nearly doubled that record gross a year later. The Rescuers Down Under, released in fall 1990, flopped. Disney left that one out of the narrative. Jeffrey Katzenberg also prematurely killed that film before it had a chance to run...

After Beauty and the Beast came out? Oliver & Company no longer mattered. By 1991-1992, Oliver & Company was already dated. The Great Mouse Detective got a ho-hum theatrical re-release in spring 1992, under the title The Adventures of The Great Mouse Detective, and then quickly went to video afterwards. The Black Cauldron was pretty much buried by this point in time... In North America. The re-release was occurring overseas around this time.

It's quite telling that The Black Cauldron was one of the final animated features to hit home video, after all of the package features even! Saludos Amigos, of all films, came out on video in the US (LaserDisc only) before The Black Cauldron. Melody Time was released on video in the US before The Black Cauldron. Supposedly, lots of fan-mail finally made Disney budge. The Black Cauldron ended up having a happy ending anyways, for 5 million units of the original VHS release were sold. That translates to about $135 million! It hasn't been a flop for 20 years...

Anyways, it's all interesting to me that Disney was willing to give this film a second chance... Or even a third... What's with the Dark Cauldron re-titling? When did THAT occur? Was there a planned second release of the movie as early as the year it came out?

One day, we have to find that out!