The Emperor’s New Groove (Kingdom of the Sun)

The Emperor’s New Groove

I actually liked Emperor’s New Groove.  The animation style was so different from most Disney films that it made the movie stand out for me.  I also liked the modern humor. 

Heck, I think David Spade was prefect as the asshole Emperor.  Patrick Warburton is brilliant as the henchman. 

After doing some research, I had no idea the movie had such a troubled production.

Notes about the production

Kingdom of the Sun (Kingdom in the Sun):  Roger Allers was the original film director. There seems to be a lot of information about the troubled production throughout the Internet. The original plans for the movie were to have the Emperor switch places with a peasant. The witch turns the real Emperor into a llama and controls the peasant. Musician Sting even went as far as writing some songs for this version of the film.

The film received some test screenings, which in turn had poor test scores. So, Disney brought in another director to work on the movie. This was after roughly 50% of the movie was drawn and filmed. Allers left the production after pressure from the studio.

That was when the movie had a complete overhaul.

Another story about the production deals with two directors on the film.  Roger Allers and Mark Dindal both worked on the film.  IMDB states that Allers and Dindal didn’t get along just started making different versions of the film, ouch.

I would love to see that older version of the film.