What Could Have Been / DreamWorks Animation

An image of Bugs: Lights Out a scrapped PDI film Pre-DreamWorks.

Examples

• PDI (pre-DW) had plans for a feature-length CGI movie as early as 1985. It never happened due to money issues.
  • In fact, one early film idea was for a film titled Bugs: Light's Out, the film being about microscopic robot insects who were responsible for electronics and machinery, going as far as having a fleshed-out script and a few animation tests made to pitch the film idea. The idea was scrapped when PDI was picked up by DreamWorks to create what ultimately became Antz.
  • Another idea was a film called Gargoyles (not to be confused with the animated series from Disney) and another unknown third film. Not much information is known about either of these films.
• John Kricfalusi was nearly hired to work for them, but after meeting the executives, who wanted him to conform to the studio's style, he backed out. Kricfalusi highlighted this event in his blog.
• At one point in the mid-90s, Will Vinton sold a pitch for a live-action/CGI animated film to DreamWorks, whatever that project was it seems like it never happened.
• There are dozens of whole films that were never made. These include Punk Farm^note based on a children's book and Truckers^note based on the Nomes Trilogy by Terry Pratchett.
• Another project, Monkeys of Mumbai, was to be a musical directed by Tarzan's Kevin Lima with songs penned by Stephen Schwartz (who previously collaborated with DreamWorks on The Prince of Egypt) and A.R. Rahman, but sat at the studio for years. It was officially confirmed by Lima to be cancelled in December 2017.
• Aside from Monkeys of Mumbai, DreamWorks (when their output was distributed by Fox and during the early years of NBCU ownership) also had films that were nearly into production that were also cancelled. These include:
  • Me and My Shadow: Announced in 2010, the film would follow a man named Daniel Grubb who teams up with his shadow to stop a shadow villain from forming a rebellion and taking over other people's shadows. The film would have been an innovative move for the studio as it would combine CG animation with traditional animation. However, the film went back into development in 2014. In 2015, DWA announced that Edgar Wright would develop a story following the similar concept but this one was also cancelled.
  • Initially teased in 2009 as a "Super-Secret Ghost Project". DWA formally announced the film later that year as Boo U which was set to focus a ghost returning to ghost school and the film was going to be directed by Tony Leondis from a screenplay by Jon Vitti & Yong Duk Jhun (however, Leondis and Tom Wheeler later took over writing duties when it was in production as B.O.O.) Later in 2012, the film was retitled to B.O.O.: Bureau of Otherworldly Operations and the story was set to now focus on two agents known as Jackson Moss and Watts who join a secret organization called B.O.O. and along the way, they find out a plot to destroy the organization by Drake, the agency's Most Wanted Hunter. The cast was also revealed at that time and production was going well… until January 2015 when DWA shuttered PDI and this led to B.O.O. being cancelled despite the film being halfway into production. In the case of B.O.O. all character designs were finalized and the first few pieces of official merchandise were revealed before any marketing began on the film. The film was one of the two films Hasbro was signed on to make the toys alongside Trolls. B.O.O. was also teased to have an animated series set after the events of the film.
  • The studio, at one point, worked on an animated musical titled Larrikins which was going to be directed by Tim Minchin and Chris Miller with Minchin writing the songs and composing the music, taking place in the Land Downunder and starring anthropomorphic Australian Wildlife. When the movie got cancelled, its characters got recycled for the short film Bilby instead.
  • Spooky Jack: The film was announced in 2017, a year after the NBCU acquisition and was set to follow three siblings who move into a new house and find out creatures that they don't exist but find out that the creatures actually do exist. This was going to be the first co-production for DWA and Blumhouse Productions and would have been the latter's first animated feature and would target families rather than BH's adult-focused horror films they produced for DWA's parent company Universal.
• DreamWorks also had a similar project called Vivo that featured songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda, which ultimately entered turnaround due to a January 2015 restructuring. However, unlike B.O.O., Me and My Shadow, or Monkeys of Mumbai, this project would eventually find a new home at Sony Pictures Animation (which did happen), to be directed by The Croods' Kirk DeMicco and co-produced by ex-Disney employee Rich Moore.
• In the mid-2000s, they came this close to creating a property based on Miss Chevious, a character from an extremely obscure 80s black-and-white comic (Tales from the Aniverse). Given DreamWorks' muscle, it could easily have lifted a 6-issue furry comic from the 80s to prominence, but apparently someone high up the ladder didn't understand the treatment written by the comic's creator.
• Before DreamWorks Animation was ultimately acquired by NBCUniversal in 2016, there were multiple companies who tried to purchase the studio prior:
  • Japanese media giant SoftBank had plans to purchase DreamWorks Animation in 2014, but for whatever reason the deal fell through, instead investing in Legendary Pictures, which ironically had another ex-Walt Disney Studios chairman, Dick Cook, on their board.
  • Hasbro considered merging with DreamWorks Animation in 2014 as well, but quickly pulled out after Hasbro's stock lost $300 million in value the day after the announcement and because DreamWorks's high asking price of $35 per share when their current value was considerably less and falling was too much for them^note Funnily enough, Comcast paid $41 per share when they successfully sealed the deal with DreamWorks two years later. Disney also wasn't terribly wild about the idea after they had sealed their own deal with Hasbro a month prior^note Ironically, rumors of Disney buying Hasbro circulated prior to these deals; Hasbro never discussed the merger with them, although to be fair, the details of the intended merger were from a letter that someone leaked to the press, meaning there may have been different plans.
    
    An SEC filing published after the NBCU agreement confirmed the talks between the two (with Hasbro being identified as “Company B”) were indeed being made. It turned out that the asking price from DreamWorks and Disney's intervention had little to do with the merger falling apart, and that the talks being reported publicly on news sites shot the merger down because it violated a confidentiality agreement the two parties signed^note Ironic, since a similar agreement was signed between DreamWorks and Comcast during their talks. Perhaps the talks were so stable compared to Hasbro's talks that there was no reason to pull back.
  • Warner Bros. also considered buying the studio, but it went nowhere.
  • The Dalian Wanda Group, which previously owned the AMC theater chain, had also discussed an acquisition of DreamWorks, but it never got serious; Dalian Wanda acquired Legendary Pictures altogether and eventually declared war on Disney in China without DreamWorks Animation.
  • Employees of Sony Pictures reportedly pressured studio executives to try to acquire DreamWorks in hopes of bolstering its animation unit and increase profits. Like the Warner Bros. example above, the talks ended up going nowhere. Before that, SPE was in talks to distribute DreamWorks's films when the Paramount deal was coming to an end.
  • Katzenberg considered returning to Paramount after hearing that Viacom considered selling the studio, but the deal never happened; he ultimately wound up forming the doomed mobile-first streaming service Quibi.
  • The last move before the sale to Comcast was Katzenberg talking with Chinese investor PAG Asia to return the company to being private with Katzenberg still at the wheel. The deal was not all that much, however, and Comcast/Universal immediately trumped the offer before it could be finalized.
• After NBCUniversal bought DWA in 2016, they wanted to have Illumination Entertainment's Chris Meledandri to spearhead both studios in the same vein as former Disney/Pixar Animation Chief Creative Officer, John Lasseter. Feeling content as CEO of Illumination, Meledandri declined the offer, taking it as a "compliment", and decided to take a consultant role instead.
• In the late 90s, Greg Weisman was developing a bunch of stuff for their short-lived TV animation division – including an animated series based on Small Soldiers, Steven Spielberg's Cliffhangers, an action anthology series involving a new 5-episode serial every week (with each ep ending on a cliffhanger, hence the name), and a series based on a DW video game, T'ai Fu: Wrath of the Tiger.
• Tusker was going to be a movie centered around elephants and supposed to be the follow-up to Shrek before a sequel to that took precedence; once it was canned, TMNT makers Imagi inherited the project, but the studio closed just one year later.

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