Directed by: Paul and Gaëtan Brizzi
 
 

INTERESTING FACTS

  The Brizzi Brothers (who directed the Firebird sequence in Fantasia 2000 and who are also responsible for the opening sequences in The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Tarzan) started working on this project in the late '90s.

  It is interesting to note that Disney has tried to make a movie based on Don Quixote for decades but could never find the right approach.

  Early reports revealed that the tone of the numerous drawings ("enough artwork for about 4 movies") was dark and spooky. They showed a gangly but obviously youthful Don Quixote, his burly and dim sidekick Sancho Panza, and some other younger looking dude who completes a trio of adventurers.

  The Brizzi Brothers are said to work faster and more intensely than anyone else in story. An insider commented: "Somehow they pack enough information in those regular sized little story sketches to show what the whole movie could look like if not given the normal Disney Animation treatment. "

  The Don Quixote project has been supposedly cancelled in September 2000, because the Disney execs thought that the Brizzis' take on Cervantes' story was much too dark; apparently it even scared some of the people who work at Disney.  Nevertheless, in a November 2000 to Anime Magazine, Paul and Gaëtan Brizzi said that they were still working on the film and that the project would surely be greenlighted soon.  But considering they supposedly resigned from Disney after the salary cuts of April 2001, this project is unlikely to go ahead anytime soon...

  As of June 2001, the film was said to be still in production, but an insider confirmed that this was no longer a "serious project" at the Mouse House since the Brizzis left.

  In August 2003, the Brizzi brothers described the turning point in their relationship with Disney, where two years' intense work on Don Quixote was consigned to the archives because, as Tom Schumacher, their boss at the time, looked them in the eyes and told them: "What you did was too smart." The Brizzis' adaptation of the Cervantes book, chosen long ago by Walt Disney himself as the perfect subject for the fantastical capacities of animation, had, like the others, failed to live down to the modest intellectual demands of the market. Dismayed by the shelving of their main project, the twins moved to DreamWorks.

  Back in 1993, a Don Quixote project was developped, then aborted, at Amblimation for producer Steven Spielberg. The two drawings below were created by  character designer Harald Siepermann, who also created characters for Tarzan, Mulan, and Treasure Planet, appeared online in late October 2001.
 
 

BEHIND THE SCENES

In August 2000, Jim Hill announced that Disney's animated version of Don Quixote was DOA. "Again.

For almost 60 years now, Walt Disney Studios has been trying to turn Cervantes' satiric stories about the Knight of the Rueful Countenance into an animated feature. Different teams of artists--in 1940, 1946 and 1951 respectively--have taken stabs at the material, only to be tripped up by the episodic nature of Don Quixote's tale.

But this time around, it looked like the Mouse might actually pull it off. For Disney had assigned Paul and Gaetan Brizzi--best known as the resident geniuses at Disney Feature Animation France--to tackle the project. Paul and Gaetan labored mightily for months on Don Quixote, turning out elaborate and immense storyboards for the proposed film. We're talking huge pieces of conceptual art here, folks. Three feet by four feet, done all in pencil. Images that took the breath away of even the most jaded of animators.

But all this artistry was for naught. Management at Disney Feature Animation took a look at all the conceptual material the Brizzis had assembled earlier this year. Even though Paul and Gaetan's storyboards were beautiful, the brass still took a pass on the proposed film.

Why for? A number of reasons, really. Cervantes' stories--in spite of their fanciful images of windmills turning into giants and humble country inns becoming castles--don't really lend themselves to animation. Don Quixote's adventures tend to start and stop a lot. So it's hard to turn a series of amusing anecdotes into a coherent dramatic narrative.

Plus the Brizzis take on the material? Intense. Dark. Very adult. Their version of the story actually frightened some of the suits in the Team Disney building. So Tom Schneider thanked Paul and Gaetan profusely for their efforts, then quietly pulled the plug on the project.

So all those great inspirational drawings by the Brizzis came down off the cork board, got carefully packed away, then sent off to the morgue... excuse me, "Animation Research Library" (ARL)... and got tucked away in a drawer someplace.

But that's okay, folks. Because sometimes when they're feeling creatively blocked, Disney animators will go down to the ARL and start burrowing through the files. What are they looking for? Images that startle. Drawings that inspire. Pictures that make you say 'God, what a great idea! I wish I'd thought of that.' Years from now, animators at the Mouseworks will be saying that very same thing when they come across Paul and Gaetan's Don Quixote artwork."