One of Disney's grandest ideas for a movie that never made it to a public screening was The Tales of Hans Christian Andersen. At least two of Andersen's stories, The Emperor's Nightingale and The Emperor's New Clothes, had already been suggested as movies in their own rights. The latter of these would have featured Mickey, Donald and Goofy as the tailors trying to convince the Emperor that their non-existent creations were the most beautiful garments ever seen. Mickey would have also had a starring role in The Emperor's Nightingale as the caretaker of the bird that entertains the ruler. Another proposed version of this story would have been radically different. The entire movie would have been created as a stunning stop-motion piece using white paper cut-outs on a white paper background.

While both stories were rejected as features, they were considered for inclusion in the Tales of Hans Christian Andersen compendium piece, alongside such other delightful fare as The Little Fir Tree, The Little Mermaid and The Steadfast Tin Soldier. This last selection would eventually surface in Fantasia 2000. The Little Mermaid, despite being considered for production as a full length feature in its own right yet discarded on numerous occasions dating back to the late 1930's, was Disney's last animation to be totally painted by hand when it was eventually released in 1989. A further Andersen tale considered for inclusion was Through the Picture Frame, a story of a little boy who enters a world he sees in a painting in order to save an endangered princess.

In some of the planned versions of The Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, the storyline would have alternated between sections based on the author's works and animated retellings of events from his life, which were to have been produced in an 'artistic', much less cartoony style. With or without the biographical sections, work on The Tales of Hans Christian Andersen began immediately upon the completion of Snow White in 1937, but unfortunately was never completed..

For over six decades the Disney animators have tried to bring the story of the insane knight Don Quixote to the screen. Starting around 1940, many artists have produced wonderful renderings of the self-styled Don tilting at windmills, but it has never been taken further than this. Even in its most recent attempts around 2000, the story was rejected for the same reason it always had been; it was too episodic, there was no logical flow through the stories.

Coming further up to date, Hal Holbrook, Lilly Tomlin and Dolly Parton were all lined up to provide voices for a ghost story with a bluegrass feel in 2003. Going under various titles like such as My Peoples, Angel And Her No-Good Sister, Once In A Blue Moon, and A Few Good Ghosts, this mix of CGI and traditional animation looked at the lives of ghosts inhabiting a collection of folk-art dolls.

Another CGI / hand drawing hybrid was the contentious Wild Life, which was abandoned in 2000. It was the improbable tale of an elephant that becomes a big star in a human night club. Strange as it sounds the film took many of its ideas from the much-loved Audrey Hepburn classic, My Fair Lady, with its central motif of an outsider who becomes an unlikely favourite of the social elite. Apparently this comedy was pulled after Roy E. Disney saw some early footage and was unhappy with the film's slightly smutty humour and gay lifestyle references.

Wild Life isn't the only musical comedy that Disney has dropped in recent times though. The successful songwriting team of Sir Tim Rice & Sir Elton John were supposed to be providing the music for Gnomeo and Juliet, a retelling of Shakespeare's classic play with the twist being that the two warring families were to be portrayed by pottery gnomes. The Capulets were to be pampered porcelains living inside cabinets in an English cottage, while the Montegues would have been played by the outdoors garden ornament gnomes. Played strictly for laughs, this co-production between Disney and John's Rocket Films company was to have starred the voices of Kate Winslet and Ewan McGregor as the lovers. It was announced for release in 2006 but canned late last year.

The most recent cancellation is apparently Fraidy Cat, a comedy thriller that was to be a pastiche of that great Hitchcock classic, The Man Who Knew Too Much. It would tell the tale of a pampered house cat who is forced to leave the comfort of his couch and clear his name when his is accused of a crime he did not commit. Fraidy Cat would have been a total homage to Alfred Hitchcock's thrillers, right down to our feline hero being chased through a field by a crop-dusting biplane. However Disney execs now apparently feel that Hitchcock's work is not widely enough known by modern movie audiences, and the entire joke would sail over many people's heads.

And there must surely be questions now about the future of The Wild? This is to be a CGI feature about a zoo lion who gets accidentally shipped off to Africa and has problems adjusting to his new-found freedom in the wilderness. Sound at all like Madagascar? Despite obvious similarities with the Dreamworks feature, this movie is still officially slated for April 2006.

These then are some of the films that the Disney studios planned but never made. There is however one beloved Disney classic that went through enough changes to warrant a full column of its own. Come back next time for the first part of a Fantasia special.