I should be updating soon. The reason I have not done so yet is because of finding a suitable voice cast as well as an issue in the real world right now. Hopefully, once both of those are resolved it should be ready.
The Shuffled Disneyverse 2.0: Another Alternate Disney Canon Timeline
- Thread starter PGSBHurricane
- Start date
Alice in Wonderland (1940)
Alice in Wonderland (1940)
Alice in Wonderland was always part of Walt’s ambition. He had read the original Alice books by Lewis Carroll as a boy. He produced a short film loosely inspired by the books called Alice’s Wonderland while working at the Laugh-O-Gram Studio. It featured child actor Virginia Davis as a live-action Alice interacting with an animated world. Between 1923 and 1927, the Alice Comedies series was in production, with Davis reprising her role in much of the run. Serious efforts to produce a feature film based on Lewis Carroll’s books began as early as 1931 when he bought the rights to John Tenniel’s illustrations. They heated up further in the spring of 1933 when Walt Disney officially bought the film rights to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Alice Through The Looking Glass. He was inspired by America’s Sweetheart and famed actress Mary Pickford who approached him with a proposal for the film. They got to work almost immediately.
The proposed pitch would combine Mary Pickford as a live-action Alice with an animated Wonderland created by the Disney studio. As soon as development began, Walt ran into a major problem. He had no idea how the story would work, considering the number of different directions the story could travel, nor did he know how Pickford as Alice would fit in. By 1934, he announced that Alice in Wonderland (the title being registered with the MPAA soon after) would be completely animated. It would also be shelved while production of Cinderella would start and supplant it as Disney’s first feature film. In the meantime, Pickford offered to stay on with the project, and Disney himself would develop a Mickey Mouse short based on the concept titled Thru the Mirror. After its release, Walt would resume development on the Alice feature, but it would not go into full swing until 1938 following Cinderella’s wide release.
Casting would be a major issue. Mary Pickford envisioned herself in the title role while the film was conceptualized as an animated/live-action hybrid. When Walt Disney decided to make the feature entirely animated, Pickford still wanted to remain involved, so she offered to portray Alice as a live-action reference to the character. Disney agreed. So she got her wish after all, but her version of the film was only for the animators and other staff at Disney’s studio, not audiences. Another issue was the story. In 1938, Al Perkins developed a version over 160 pages long, and Disney personally found it too dark. He also didn’t want it to be too literal of an adaptation of the story or else Americans would probably think of the final product as too British. Even the characters were considered too unlikeable. Finally, there was the issue of animation. Disney personally bought the rights to John Tenniel’s illustrations in 1931, but concept art based on these illustrations proved to be very grotesque in places. There was a lot to sort out before the film would premiere.
The story of Alice in Wonderland begins with Alice lying on a riverbank while her sister gives a history lesson. She notices the White Rabbit and follows him down a rabbit hole, with a group of butterflies lowering her to safety. At the bottom of the hole, she sees the White Rabbit again and attempts to follow him to a door. She drinks from a talking bottle labeled “Drink Me” and subsequently shrinks. Her sudden change in height causes Alice to cry a massive pool of her tears and swims through the door before washing ashore in Wonderland. Alice then continues to follow the White Rabbit and encounters a variety of creatures along the way, climaxing with the Mad Hatter and the March Hare at the iconic Mad Tea Party. Throughout her journey, Alice battles with the trickster Cheshire Cat, who routinely mocks her and tricks her into going the wrong way. He ultimately sends her on a path to the villainous Queen of Hearts, with whom Alice ends up facing far more than what she bargained for.
Disney originally contemplated Alice to be released on Christmas 1938, but gave it a more realistic tentative date for the spring of 1939. Additional work on the story and animation proved to be very timely, so it was pushed back to Christmas 1939 and finally to 1940. Alice in Wonderland premiered on February 7, 1940, in London and March 18, 1940, in New York City at the Centre Theater.[1] In the USA, it was paired with the Mickey Mouse short The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and would gross $720,000 in domestic rentals during its initial theatrical run, far short of its $2.3 million budget. Its run in the UK, the British Commonwealth, and Latin America somewhat made up for this, but it still was not nearly enough to allow the film to make a profit because World War II cut off the market to much of mainland Europe and Asia, the former comprising as much as 45% of the income that Disney generated on average. It received mixed reviews from critics, receiving praise for the animation, music, and voice acting (particularly Alice herself, the Mad Hatter, and the Queen of Hearts) but got criticized for lacking the warmth of Cinderella and its lack of faithfulness to Lewis Caroll’s works. The next film would not help Disney financially either.
Voice Cast:
- Hazel Ascot as Alice [2]
- Mary Pickford as the live-action reference for Alice
- Virginia Davis as Alice’s sister [3]
- Frank Morgan as the White Rabit and the King of Hearts
- Cliff Edwards as the Drinking Bottle
- C. Aubrey Smith as the Dodo
- J Pat O’Malley as Bill the Lizard
- Owen Coll as the Gryphon
- Richard Haydn as the Mock Turtle
- W.C. Fields as the Caterpillar
- Reginald Gardiner as the Cheshire Cat
- Mel Blanc as Tweedledee and Tweedledum
- Ed Wynn as the Mad Hatter [4]
- Groucho Marx as the March Hare
- Joseph Shildkraut as the Queen of Hearts [5]
[1] These are the premieres of Pinocchio IOTL in the USA and the UK by the are switched ITTL because OTL's Alice premiered first in Britain IOTL.
[2] Was dubbed as the British Shirley Temple at the time
[3] Kept as a mythology gag from the Laugh-O-Gram Alice cartoons
[4] The transcript of the 1939 draft IOTL had Wynn as the March Hare but I can't see anyone else playing the Hatter so I switched Groucho Marx to the March Hare
[5] One suggestion in the 1939 transcription was to have a man play the Queen of Hearts
A/N: So, this version is basically a mashup of the 1933 Paramount version, the 1939 Disney draft of the film, and the final 1951 Disney version from IOTL. And if Cinderella was TTL’s Snow White then Alice is like TTL’s Fantasia reputation-wise.
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Oof, that’s a sad one on Walt’s part.
So the Sorcerer’s Apprentice is a part of TTL’s Alice in Wonderland. I’m assuming Fantasia isn’t releasing any time soon then.
Anyways, are there any songs from OTL’s Alice here? What happens to “When You Wish Upon a Star”? And is there a Jiminy Cricket type character in TTL’s Disney Canon?
I mean to be fair, OTL’s Alice in Wonderland had a reputation similar to Fantasia so it’s not too far fetched considering that this version is even more ahead of its time. I also wouldn’t quite say the Sorcerer’s Apprentice is part of Alice, just released alongside it. Fantasia won’t be released for a while.
As for the music, I’m not sure if any of the songs from OTL’s version will carry over other than the introduction music. When You Wish Upon a Star is used here and there are seven other songs based on what was composed by Frank Churchill to accompany the 1939 draft and are found in the limited edition Disney’s Lost Chord.
I modified Alice's budget slightly to more realistically reflect the costs that would've been associated with the movie. Also, I'm not sure if I should introduce Stereosound with the next title ITTL since Fantasound was more or less created just for Fantasia. While there's music here, it isn't going to be the masterpiece of OTL Fantasia.
I think you should save it for when we reach Fantasia in the timeline.
That might not be for a while but we will see, possibly as soon as the next update
I mean stereo sound had to be invented sometime.
Considering the pattern I’m sensing here, I’m guessing Peter Pan is next
I've decided to incorporate the stereosound creation in the next update. And as far as the next title, I won't give away any hints that don't come from other updates.
The Jungle Book (1940)
The Jungle Book (1940)
For Walt’s third endeavor, he considered the following stories: Bambi, Pinocchio, and Peter Pan. Difficulties in acquiring the rights to the former two canceled these plans, and he found the titular character of the latter far too unlikeable. None of these stories would become a reality until at least the 1990s. Another film entitled The Concert Feature was also in early development to allow the Mickey Mouse short The Sorcerer’s Apprentice to earn back its budget, but Walt Disney and conductor Leopold Stokowski were at odds with what musical piece to use for the classical mythology segment. Needless to say, Disney and Stokowski could not find a compromise by the time Stokowski’s contract expired. Many of the planned stories for the musical segments were incorporated into Make Mine Music. So, the third entry in the Walt Disney animated canon would be inspired by a 1937 live-action movie that caught Walt’s attention entitled Elephant Boy, based on Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book. Walt beat Alexander Korda for the film rights to The Jungle Book in the spring of 1938, and production began immediately.
This would be easy for Disney in some ways and a challenge in others. On one hand, the number of human characters was far more limited compared to Cinderella and even Alice in Wonderland. On the other hand, difficulties in animating realistic animals would become apparent, but it would not be as bad as with the proposed Bambi feature. Next was the setting. The writers considered moving the story to Africa at one point due to the myriad of Tarzan films released over the past 20 years which made American audiences more familiar with it than the British Raj setting of The Jungle Book novels. This was rejected because it would alter the plot, and the film was set in British India as planned (Disney would try their hand at a Tarzan film in the 1960s, however). While not as controversial as with the planned Pinocchio film, there were several questions on how to write Mowgli as the main protagonist.
Story work for The Jungle Book began in the summer of 1938 and was completed by January 1939. Animation started in September 1938. There were numerous similarities to Alice in Wonderland before it from a production perspective. Like with Alice, this motion picture was experimental in its special effects animation. Three-dimensional clay models of the characters, also known as maquettes, were built to let animators observe how to draw the characters. Additionally, the staff used the multiplane camera to full effect and shot the animation in successive cyan, magenta, and yellow-exposed frames. Casting for The Jungle Book took place in January 1939, and most of the dialogue recording took place in April and May, extending to August 1940 when necessary. The cast recorded their dialogue, and the musicians their score, using a multichannel stereophonic system conceived during the production of Alice in Wonderland and perfected by 1939, hence the name Wondersound. [1] Disney cast child star Dickie Jones as Mowgli, the main protagonist.
Sometime in the late 19th century in British India, a wolf couple finds an abandoned baby boy in the middle of the jungle and names the “man-cub” Mowgli. He is raised by the wolfpack by Akela and assisted by Baloo, a sloth bear, and Bagheera, a melanistic Indian leopard. Mowgli is educated about the "Law of the Jungle" as he grows older. By the time he turns 11 years old, the evil tiger Shere Khan threatens the pack, particularly Mowgli himself, and he learns that the only way to ward him off is through fire. He steals a pot of coals from a nearby human village and makes fire, much to the delight of the wolves, Baloo, and Bagheera. But this causes a group of Bandar-log monkeys to kidnap him, take him to their abandoned city, and name Mowgli their king. Only with the help of their feared predator, Kaa the python, are Baloo and Bagheera able to free him. Shere Khan once again is lurking around and encounters Mowgli, threatening him with a sadistic choice that must force him to confront the fact that he is a man, not a “man-cub” and must leave the jungle for good.
With hundreds of personnel and a budget of $2.4 million, The Jungle Book premiered on November 13, 1940, at the Broadway Theater in New York, complete with Wondersound installed. It later received a wide release nationwide on January 29, 1941. It earned about $1.6 million in domestic box office rentals. Beyond its high budget, what caused it to not earn it back in its initial run was the fact that each Wondersound system cost $85,000 to install, which meant only 16 cities nationwide had one. Outside the USA, it earned $1.3 in rentals by the end of its initial run thanks to World War 2 cutting off mainland Europe and Asia. While it wasn't an outright failure at the box office like its predecessor, it was a notable underperformance. Critic reviews at the time were generally more positive than its predecessor due to the improved animation and characters, some criticized the film for its episodic plot, a tone believed to be too dark in a time of international war [2], and a divisive protagonist. Its fortunes would later improve in the post-war era; but in the meantime, Disney faced an uncertain future.
Voice Cast:
- Dickie Jones as Mowgli
- Cliff Edwards as Baloo
- Clarence Nash as Bagheera
- Walter Catlett as Kaa
- Charles Judels as Shere Khan
- Thurl Ravenscroft as Colonel Hathi
- Evelyn Venable as Mrs. Hathi, Mama Wolf
- Stuart Buchanan as Papa Wolf, Akela
- Christian Rub as Monkey #1
- Frankie Darro as Monkey #2
- Mel Blanc as Monkey #3
[1] Wondersound is the analogue to Fantasound ITTL.
[2] The plot is a mix of the original books and OTL’s 1967 animated version and the tone is closer to the 2016 re-make as well as OTL’s Pinocchio.
Songs include Heigh-Ho (song by the Elephants in place of Colonel Hathi's March), Give A Little Whistle, a modified version of Hi-Diddle-Dee-Dee, and Pinocchio's verse of I've Got No Strings from OTL.
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I’m assuming Make Mine Music is still in the Package Era like in OTL and in the original TSD
So Kaa is not an antagonist this time around? Interesting to see him act like his book counterpart
With Make Mine Music, it’s still in the Package area, yes. It’s just a matter of when. As for Kaa he’s not really a protagonist or antagonist but rather a neutral character.
I assume that this were the first footnote for the previous update would’ve gone. I’m guessing it’s not there because of an error?
As an additional note, The Jungle Book is pretty much this timeline's version of Pinocchio in terms of reputation, the episodic nature of both stories, as well as both being about the main character kind of being a blank slate to tell important lessons.
And the next entry won't be for a bit because I'm trying to make the story work in a 1940s setting (both OTL and TTL's versions are based off pre-existing works) plus I'll be working on another timeline in the meantime.
And the next entry won't be for a bit because I'm trying to make the story work in a 1940s setting (both OTL and TTL's versions are based off pre-existing works) plus I'll be working on another timeline in the meantime.
Fun fact, this version of the Jungle Book is the first to be a direct adaptation of more than one story of the original book itself. The next one will also be one of the first if not the first adaptations of its source material too, making it a bit of a challenge.