Who killed Roger Rabbit?
why there was no sequel to 1988 animated hit
Mar 12, 2007 Dominic von Riedemann
(Source: www.filmbuffonline.com)
Rich Drees at FilmBuffOnline has cranked out a fascinating piece on one of the biggest animation classics of the past 20 years: Who Framed Roger Rabbit? This live-action/animated hybrid was one of the most successful movies of the 1980's, and could have been the start of a successful franchise. So what went wrong?
According to Drees, a monumental ego clash between then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner and The Beard himself, Steven Spielberg. Here's a quick run-down of Drees' chronology: to check out the full monty, click here.
The fact that Who Framed Roger Rabbit? happened at all was a miracle. In 1980, Disney Studio Ron Miller head got a hold of a (now out of print) Gary Wolf novel called Who Censored Roger Rabbit? a spoof of crime noir novels. Seeing some potential, Miller bought the film rights for $25,000.
What started as a surreal rip-off of Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep began to change under the revisions of script writers Jeffrey Price and Peter Seaman. The biggest change (other than the name): Roger and his pals went from being actors who posed for a comic strip to being a full-on cartoon characters who would interact with human actors.
Putting toons and humans together on film was a classic concept that went back to Max Fleischer's cartoons of the 1920's. Disney had even used it in four movies: 1946's Song of the South, 1964's Mary Poppins, 1971's Bedknobs and Broomsticks and 1977's Pete's Dragon. But Price and Seaman wanted to go even farther and give iconic cartoon characters like Betty Boop and Bugs Bunny cameos in the film. It was a brilliant idea but it also made the script nearly unfilmable.
Paramount, Warner Bros. and Universal, seeing no future in their old toons, turned Disney down. The script didn't even get any love from the three directors Disney approached: Steven Spielberg, Robert Zemeckis and Joe Dante. Because of this, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? was stuck in development hell and would remain so for the next two years.
It was new Disney CEO Michael Eisner and studio chief Jeffrey Katzenberg, looking for a new blockbuster, who would get Roger Rabbit on the big screen.
However, the big stumbling block remained: no rival studio was going to loan Disney their classic toon characters. However, Eisner had an ace in the hole: Steven Spielberg.
When Eisner was head of Paramount, he had taken a chance on a little adventure movie no other studio would touch with a barge pole, something called Raiders of the Lost Ark. Knowing that Spielberg owed him one, he approached the director for assistance. Roger Rabbit would now become a partnership between Disney and Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment, and Spielberg would bring in pal George Lucas' ILM special effects crew. Having The Beard on board was the leverage that would open the other studios' toon vaults.
Spielberg's price was high: he wanted equal shares of Roger Rabbit's copyright. That meant a 50/50 split on the profits from the movie and all merchandise. Eisner, knowing the red-hot director was crucial to the film's chances, agreed.
Needless to say, Spielberg was able to get the other studios to loan out their toons. Only Warner Bros. had any fine print: Bugs Bunny could only appear opposite Mickey Mouse and had to have the same number of words in his lines.
Not surprisingly, the budget skyrocketed from an estimated $30 million to a then-shocking $50.6 million. Katzenberg drove Spielberg and the Roger Rabbit crew hard: the film barely made its June 24th release date.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit? was an instant success becoming the most profitable film of 1988. A sequel short, Tummy Trouble, also helped make the mediocre Rick Moranis comedy Honey, I Shrunk the Kids a hit. Roger Rabbit had gone from a no-go to a no-brainer.
However, trouble started with the second sequel short, Roller Coaster Rabbit. Spielberg wanted it to appear in front of his comedy-horror film Arachnophobia; Eisner wanted it to prop up Warren Beatty's troubled production of Dick Tracy. Eisner won, and the results were plain. Dick Tracy was a modest hit ($103.7 million) while Arachnophobia barely broke even. Spielberg wasn't happy.
Spielberg proceeded to demonstrate the depths of his unhappiness by nixing nearly every Roger Rabbit script presented to him, only approving Trail Mix-Up.
The embargo even extended to the script for a possible feature length sequel, which would have had Roger Rabbit wooing Jessica while exposing her boss as a Nazi collaborator. After making 1993's Schindler's List, Spielberg decided he no longer wanted to use Nazis as villains in his movies.
In 1997, The Beard was convinced with the script for Who Discovered Roger Rabbit?, which would spoof Judy Garland's A Star is Born. Award-winning tunesmith Alan Mencken was so buzzed over the movie that he had written several songs. However, there were new troubles: studio head Jeffrey Katzenberg had acrimoniously left Disney and was working at DreamWorks with Spielberg. Also, the estimated budget for Who Discovered Roger Rabbit? was somewhere around $100 million. Deciding that the flick was too much hassle for not enough profit, Eisner unceremoniously killed the project in 1999.
Will a Roger Rabbit sequel ever see the silver screen? It's possible but unlikely. The fact that current Disney CEO Robert Iger is making nice with Katzenberg may lead to a sequel. Roger Rabbit director Robert Zemeckis is now developing motion capture movies for the Mouse House, so that adds another piece of the puzzle. Even though the cost of CGI is slowly coming down, a sequel will be a monumental undertaking. Everyone knows that, for Roger Rabbit to do well, it will have to look as good (if not better) than anything currently in theatres. The Mouse House has enough projects on the go that, if it happens, it won't be before 2010.
The only question now is: are there enough Roger Rabbit fans to convince Iger, Katzenberg, Zemeckis and The Beard to put aside their differences and make this movie? Let us know.
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