Disney Animation's ambitious and innovative 1985 film The Black Cauldron was an experiment that dramatically failed, arguably putting the future of the studio in question.
Disney Animation was on the lookout for a new identity in the 1980s. After half-a-century of success, this decade of the company's history is commonly referred to as the "Bronze" or "Dark Age", neither exactly a ringing endorsement of its films. Hope came in the form of The Black Cauldron, which seemed like the perfect way to announce a new kind of Disney animation. It was the studio's first foray into high fantasy, a PG-rated film about a young boy trying to stop a mythical cauldron that can create an army of undead soldiers (the so-called "Cauldron-Born" scene, in which an undead army emerges from a boiling pot is still terrifying, 40 years on). It signalled that Disney was ready to appeal to a new audience.
Instead, The Black Cauldron was a disaster for the studio. A box office failure, it earned $21m (£15.6m) less than half of its $44m (£32.7m) budget. It came in fourth on its opening weekend, behind National Lampoon's European Vacation, a re-release of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, and Back to the Future, already a month into its theatrical run. At the time of its release in 1985, it was the most expensive animated film ever made.
Instead of being the film that would take Disney to new heights, The Black Cauldron has become known as the film that nearly took down the company. That perception seems to have first emerged in a 2010 Slate article, which stated that the film "almost killed Disney animation". In 2025, it's hard to have a conversation about The Black Cauldron without it being mentioned that it almost shut down the animation department. But is that a justified claim, or is it merely a myth that's lingered for decades?
It feels strikingly dark. The Cauldron-Born scene is probably more macabre than anything they'd done in the past – Dr Sam Summers
What is certain is that The Black Cauldron aimed to be a different kind of Disney film. "Ron Miller, the former CEO of the company and the son-in-law of Walt Disney, wanted the film to be a departure," Neil O'Brien, author of After Disney: Toil, Trouble, and the Transformation of America's Favorite Media Company, tells the BBC. "He wanted it to appeal to a teenage, young-adult audience, and deliberately went about making sure there were no songs in the movie that could turn off teenage audiences."
The Black Cauldron also had a PG rating, a first for Disney. "That's standard now, but it was very progressive in that regard, pushing boundaries to where animation could be," Mindy Johnson, author of Ink & Paint: The Women of Walt Disney's Animation, tells the BBC. "It feels strikingly dark. The Cauldron-Born scene is probably more macabre than anything they'd done in the past," Dr Sam Summers, lecturer in Animation at Middlesex University, tells the BBC.
Clashes at the studio
But things were getting dark behind the scenes, too. A new generation of graduates from the California Institute of the Arts, or CalArts, such as Brad Bird and John Lasseter (who later became driving forces at Pixar, directing The Incredibles and Toy Story respectively), wanted to bring a fresh aesthetic to the studio. But this led to clashes with the old guard, who were keen to maintain the status quo. "There were a lot of competing factions when Cauldron was underway," says O'Brien. The mood at the studio shifted from highly optimistic to concerned.
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Based on a five-book 1960s series, The Chronicles of Prydain, by Lloyd Alexander, adapting The Black Cauldron was a towering feat. "It was an epic narrative, and there were challenges winnowing that down in years of development," says Johnson. It was also the first film to implement computer animation, including cauldron effects and a magical orb. And it was the first Disney film since 1959's Sleeping Beauty to be in 70mm, which meant animators had larger and more expensive canvases to animate. They toyed with complicated and costly technology like a hologram system for cinemas to bring those born from the cauldron to life.
The Black Cauldron "was a big task for a group of newcomers", says Johnson, who were nonetheless eager to show what they were made of. "Animator Andreas Deja told me they wanted Cauldron to be the Snow White of their generation," Johnson says. Some of the talent working on it have been key to the industry ever since: Tim Burton, Ron Clements, Jill Colbert, and Kathy Zielinski all cut their teeth on the film.
Then Disney changed its leadership. On 6 September 1984, CEO Ron Miller was ousted by the board and replaced two weeks later by Paramount President Michael Eisner. Eisner made big changes, including hiring Jeffrey Katzenberg as chairman of Walt Disney Studios. "Things became more corporate," says Johnson. "Katzenberg came in at the time this film was nearing completion, and was slated for release around Christmas. But Katzenberg didn't like what he saw of the film and pushed it back. That lent itself to the cacophony of this period."
Alamy
Animation was not something Katzenberg prioritised. "Live action was the crown jewel, and a lot of attention was paid there. Katzenberg was more or less assigned animation. It was second tier in Eisner's eyes," says Johnson. After disastrous test screenings that reportedly had children running out of the theatre crying, Katzenberg was dismayed. "He thinks, 'We can't do this.' He's not thinking of all the scary films that built the Disney legacy. He's thinking it'll affect the box office and the bottom line," says Summers. Katzenberg demanded extreme changes, including cutting 15 minutes.
If you look at the powers that were there at the time, they'd say, 'Why do we need this? Why are we throwing money away?' – Mindy Johnson
Editing is something that happens in animated films long before the actual animation process. "Every frame is so carefully thought out and goes through multiple iterations of storyboarding. Typically, you try to figure out the story and cuts in the early phases of the project," says O'Brien. Yet Katzenberg took to editing the film himself at a far later stage, to the chagrin of the animators. "He just locked himself in an editing room and started going to town. He comes in fresh, with no animation experience, and starts personally cutting up this film, and it sends ripples of friction through the studio," says Summers.
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After numerous delays and production troubles, the film's budget skyrocketed from $25m (£18.6m) to an estimated $44m, exceeding that of the studio's previous six films combined. This leap wasn't inherently a problem, however. "Ron Miller viewed the big budget as a good thing. This was an era where Hollywood studios were proud to promote how much a film cost, to show that it was of high quality," says O'Brien.
Sadly, though, The Black Cauldron bombed. The PG rating deterred young audiences, who were Disney's core viewers, and the film's convoluted plot and muted critical reception put off older cinema-goers. It was a massive financial failure. There were layoffs. But did The Black Cauldron almost kill Disney Animation?
"No, not at all. That idea comes up for the first time in 2010," says O'Brien [referencing the aforementioned Slate article]. "I didn't encounter any evidence for The Black Cauldron almost killing the studio." That doesn't mean, however, that things weren't seriously precarious.
Alamy
"It lost a lot of money at exactly the wrong time, because it's precisely when these executives have come in from outside, and they're watching things closely," says Summers. The results for The Black Cauldron were so poor that it made less than a re-release of the 1961 film One Hundred and One Dalmatians, which grossed $33m (£24.5m). Executives had to consider whether producing new animation was still viable, especially when the wider Disney corporation was thriving with its live-action slate, merchandising and theme parks. "If you look at the powers that were there at the time, they'd say, 'Why do we need this? Why are we throwing money away? We're making money hand over fist over here. Let's focus on that,'" says Johnson.
"It didn't have a chance to kill Animation, because they were going to finish The Great Mouse Detective," says Summers, about Disney Animation's follow-up to The Black Cauldron, which was already well underway. That film fared much better, earning $25m on initial release on a $14m (£10.4m) budget, getting things back on track for the studio. "Cauldron was a turning point, and it launched us into where we are today," says Johnson.
The experts agree that it was one man who ensured the continuation of Disney Animation: Roy E Disney, Walt's nephew. "The Black Cauldron took a big hit for the studio. It took Roy Disney to come in and champion it and hold firm that animation is what this company was founded on," says Johnson. And Roy E Disney's perseverance certainly paid dividends. Four years after Black Cauldron came 1989's The Little Mermaid, which ushered in the "Disney Renaissance", the most successful critical and commercial era in Disney history.
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