The Kingdom of the Sun - The cancelled Disney masterpiece

[Ronnie]

"The Kingdom of the Sun" was the original title for the movie that later became "The Emperor's New Groove".​

Originally Directed by Don Hahn and Randy Fullmer, the film has surprisingly a lot of information published about its development, being that the reason why I got so interested in gathering as much info as I could about it and archiving it.​

The most notable piece of media related to this project is in fact "The Sweatbox" (That can be found here), a documentary recorded by Sting that gives an insiders peek into the continuous progress of the movie, ended being banned by Disney for showing creative-executive conflicts and some unprofessional behavior from their employees.​

Upon watching the documentary, it's easy to understand that the unfortunate fate of The Kingdom of the Sun came because of the different visions shared by the directors and the conflict between wanting a serious musical and a light-hearted comedy. This inevitably ended with Don Hahn abandoning the film entirely, which lead to a total scrap of the story after the critiques disapproved of the animatic version of the movie.

Thankfully, since the development was already so advanced there is a couple of unreleased content on the internet including a couple of animated clips...​

1. Several clips from the Sweatbox
2. More clips (some repeated from 1.)
3. Pacha pencil animation clips
4. Yzma test
5. Mata test (deleted character)
6. Manco test (former Kuzco)

...and the finished songs that only got to see the light of day (no pun intended) on the Emperor's New Groove official soundtrack CD:​

Spoiler: CD Cover Art (includes international releases)

1. "Snuff Out the Light" (Eartha Kitt)
2. "One Day She'll Love Me"
3. "Walk The Llama Llama"

Also: Sting's "My Funny Friend and Me" live performance at the Oscars!

There are also indications that there was, at some point, an entirely different soundtrack for "The Emperor's New Groove" that got completely scrapped.

"Kingdom of the Sun" Character Breakdown and Sequences​

Documents that show us how the story was going to progress and who the characters were.

Spoiler: Character breakdowns & Prologue

Spoiler: Sequence

To finish this off I would like some concept art made by the team.​

(I plan on making more in-depth highlights in the replies)

• Spoiler: Nik Ranieri

  

  
• Spoiler: Antonio Navarro

  

  
• Spoiler: Sandro Cleuzo

  

  

I encourage anyone to search more about this abandoned film! And that's why I decided to create this thread in the first place, not only to share my interest in the movie but also to create a discussion!​

 

[Milkis]

If they did it seriously, it might have ended up like Prince of Egypt.

 

[Ronnie]

If they did it seriously, it might have ended up like Prince of Egypt.

Without a shadow of a doubt, since one of the directors was the one responsible for "The Lion King" things could've been promising...

Not to mention the overall darker tones the concept art had.

 

[Kari Kamiya]

I fucking adore The Emperor's New Groove, and yet I think this is a travesty that Eisner hated it and demanded it to be reworked. I don't know what his thought process was sitting in that test screening for over 70(?) minutes to see what the crew had worked so passionately on and tell them his thoughts, but he crushed everyone's spirits. I fully understand this happens all the time, stories go through multiple rewrites, sometimes are reworked from scratch, characters are lessened or dropped completely, sometimes the story just never comes to fruition and then is shelved to gather dust. It's a wonder they were even able to get a movie out especially after most of the crew left.

But Disney banning the documentary after giving the full go-ahead to Sting's wife just because it made them look bad is what makes them look bad. Fans only grieve its loss because of how everyone was treated, but fans come away from this documentary more interested in the behind-the-scenes process of making creative content and just how easy it is for it to be rejected. It's hard, no one ever said this was easy to do, but that's show biz. Disney is no different, but "Hyuhck, we gotta keep the magic alive in the public eye!" so they hide the bad to give the illusion they're a perfect studio where nothing goes wrong.

*cough*

At least we got The Road to El Dorado to fill in that void. Although I'm still unsure if that movie was just a huge coincidence or if it was another instance of Katzenberg taking ideas when he left Disney.

 

[Dom Cruise]

I have The Sweatbox in its entirety and it really doesn't paint Disney in as bad a light as you'd think given the infamous reputation, it's close to your average making of documentary, just a little more frank than usual, the most shocking thing is that David Spade at one point says "pussy"

 

[Ronnie]

At least we got The Road to El Dorado to fill in that void. Although I'm still unsure if that movie was just a huge coincidence or if it was another instance of Katzenberg taking ideas when he left Disney.

Honestly, If that is the case (which it probably is) then I thank him for doing so.

 

[swingbatta]

I can't see a mention of "Kingdom of the Sun"/"The Sweatbox" without including the animatic of "Snuff Out The Light"

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

I grew up with Emperor's New Groove and it's still one of my favorite Disney movies just for how unique it is among Disney's animated catalog. The production history is certainly fascinating, and one can only wonder what could have been had the movie never been reworked, but at the same time I don't know if the movie would have been half as memorable if it came out as it was originally intended to be. Part of Emperor's charm comes from how off-beat it is for a Disney movie, and Empire of the Sun sounds like it would have been another movie that resembled the rest of Disney's 90s output. It probably would have been great, maybe even excellent, but at the end of the day I'm more than happy with the movie we got.

 

[Pokemonquistador2]

I grew up with Emperor's New Groove and it's still one of my favorite Disney movies just for how unique it is among Disney's animated catalog. The production history is certainly fascinating, and one can only wonder what could have been had the movie never been reworked, but at the same time I don't know if the movie would have been half as memorable if it came out as it was originally intended to be. Part of Emperor's charm comes from how off-beat it is for a Disney movie, and Empire of the Sun sounds like it would have been another movie that resembled the rest of Disney's 90s output. It probably would have been great, maybe even excellent, but at the end of the day I'm more than happy with the movie we got.

It could have been "Pocahontas, but with Aztecs."

I figured that Emperor's New Groove had some kind of chaotic production, simply because it had such a good message: "Narcissism is bad." Also, one of its main heroes was a family man in a traditional family. It's about as non-woke a movie as you can get.

 

[biozeminadae1]

At least we got The Road to El Dorado to fill in that void. Although I'm still unsure if that movie was just a huge coincidence or if it was another instance of Katzenberg taking ideas when he left Disney.

That movie sucks, the only good thing was the female redskin.

 

[2021Murder]

Eisner gets shit on too much in my opinion. Hes a creative that got fucked in his last decade because wells wasnt there to make the money match the vision. And say what you will about the emperors new groove, it made more money than the "better" DreamWorks films that aped the original concept. Also the market for a dramatic animated film is essentially non-existent. Which is what fucked dreamworks on Spirit/road to Eldorado/sinbad and what fucked other animation studios in the rest of the late 90s/early 2000s. And it's rather telling that in the last decade no ones tried it thematically either.

Also emperors new groove is a great babies first snarky narrator and timeline film. A lot of the stuff that is cliche for teen and regular films by the 90s and 2000s was still not really seen in animated movies, animated film was still stuck in the 1950s when it came to conventions. This film really beat dreamworks to the punch on introducing new Hollywood/french new wave techniques to children. The whole snarky protagonist, narcissistic royalty, banter between man and animal that we see in Shrek was all done here years before. Hell even the evil well connected witch with dumb sidekick from shrek 2 is seen here as well. And the fact that shrek was going to be a chris Farley film ripping off a David spade film is quite telling too.

TL;DR the original concept for the film would have flopped. Eisner saved it pretty well. Only anime loving weirdos think an animated dramatic musical film not about jesus would have worked.

 

[janedoe]

kuzco is best disney princess. hands down.

for real though i'd love to see more disney MCs that are legit assholes who are forced to humble themselves and learn a lesson like kuzco did. especially since right now cinema is riding on the high of female protags who are excruciatingly unlikeable yet that unlikeability is never addressed.

interesting as the old concepts were, it is way too overshadowed by my love for emperors new groove.

 

[biozeminadae1]

Eisner gets shit on too much in my opinion. Hes a creative that got fucked in his last decade because wells wasnt there to make the money match the vision. And say what you will about the emperors new groove, it made more money than the "better" DreamWorks films that aped the original concept. Also the market for a dramatic animated film is essentially non-existent. Which is what fucked dreamworks on Spirit/road to Eldorado/sinbad and what fucked other animation studios in the rest of the late 90s/early 2000s. And it's rather telling that in the last decade no ones tried it thematically either.

Guy should have went to Japan, then.

 

[2021Murder]

kuzco is best disney princess. hands down.

for real though i'd love to see more disney MCs that are legit assholes who are forced to humble themselves and learn a lesson like kuzco did. especially since right now cinema is riding on the high of female protags who are excruciatingly unlikeable yet that unlikeability is never addressed.

interesting as the old concepts were, it is way too overshadowed by my love for emperors new groove.

what sort of piece of shit hates David Spade anyways? he's amazing. his snarky persona gave america like 14 seasons of dogshit tv shows. Honestly the lack of POC doing classic personas is what i would consider a big factor in our death of cinema. There is no black Michael Shannon or Asian Billy Zapka, and no Latino David Spade or Indian Jack Nicholson.

what sort of spic could play Kuzco?

 

[RumblyTumbly]

Honestly, its a miracle that this movie got torn to shreds and completely reworked into The Emperor's New Groove and it still turned out to be a solid movie.

Most movies that have a history half as bad as this one turn out to be disasters, so credit to all involved that the movie turned out well and is fondly remembered by most people.

Still though, it would have been interesting to see what Kingdom of the Sun would have been like if completed in its original intention. This material all looks fascinating. Its weird to me that Disney canned this, but then looked at Home of the Range and Brother Bear and went "Oh that's ok".