Willem Dafoe Nearly Starred In A Cancelled Sequel To A Huge Disney Flop

If you know your animation history pretty well, you know that even the biggest studios can have false starts. A major studio can announce the development of a new animated film, only for that movie to never see the light of day, for one reason or another. Pixar, for example, has axed its own titles for being too similar to those of competing studios, like the time it removed "Newt," a film about procreating newts, from its schedule over concerns it was too similar to Blue Sky Studios' "Rio," as one example. Sometimes, though, it's as simple as a studio's executive team shifting, like when Netflix's planned adaptation of the "Redwall" fantasy-adventure book series was sent into development hell because of the studio's changing priorities. 

Finally, in select cases, there's an even simpler excuse: If one movie doesn't do well at the box office, any potential sequel goes the way of the dodo.

Such was the fate of the intended followup to the 2002 Disney animated feature (and massive box office flop) "Treasure Planet." It was a daring enough film simply in terms of its concept and scope, but Disney executives were confident about its prospects — so much so they approved of a direct-to-video sequel before the movie was even released. In fact, they'd gone so far as ensuring that some of the original film's cast would return and be joined by an excellent actor with a voice made for animation. To be sure, bringing Willem Dafoe into the world of Disney animation made perfect sense, and he got so close to being part of it that he almost recorded dialogue for the "Treasure Planet" sequel ... until Disney canceled it entirely.

The notion behind "Treasure Planet" was simple: What if there was an animated adaptation of the iconic Robert Louis Stevenson novel "Treasure Island" with a sci-fi flair? A chunk of the storyline of "Treasure Planet" is very similar to "Treasure Island," even for those audience members with just a passing sense of awareness of the story of Jim Hawkins (voiced here by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and his adventures on a pirate ship with the greedy and selfish Long John Silver (Brian Murray), a kind-hearted captain (Emma Thompson), and other key characters. As directed by John Musker and Ron Clements, "Treasure Planet" is an ambitious film that was undoubtedly intended to appeal more to young boys than girls — the perception from Disney's marketing team being that young male audiences were alienated by women-driven stories like "Lilo & Stitch" or "Mulan." (Of course, that means you have to ignore the solid box office returns for Disney's 1999 animated feature "Tarzan" as a recent example relative to when the film was released.)

In spite of the presence of Musker & Clements, who had co-directed such beloved Disney classics as "The Little Mermaid" and "Aladdin," "Treasure Planet" failed to hit it big at the box office when it was released in the fall of 2002. Now, context is key: though the film was released over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend (a common time for Disney's animated releases to be distributed), its competition was pretty intense. Leaving aside the presence of the James Bond movie "Die Another Day," "Treasure Planet" had direct competition for the attention of families from another Disney title, "The Santa Clause 2." But neither of those films were as daunting as "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets," which dominated the holiday box office. So, it's perhaps not too shocking that "Treasure Planet," which had a reported budget of $140 million, only made $109 million worldwide. Even with moderately positive reviews, the film was simply unable to break through the noise.

And that is exactly why the film's planned sequel died on the vine at the same time that the original film was in theaters. According to Jun Falkenstein, who had served as the director on the DisneyToon Studios feature "The Tigger Movie" and was set to helm the "Treasure Planet" sequel, everything was set in advance of the 2002 holiday season. She'd worked on a general outline for the followup, in which Jim Hawkins studies at an academy overseen by Captain Amelia (Thompson) and eventually has to partner with Silver to fend off the evil advances of Captain Ironbeard. Cast members like Gordon-Levitt, Murray, and Thompson were onboard, and were set to be joined by Willem Dafoe as Ironbeard. Per Falkenstein, she was ready to record Dafoe's first round of dialogue the Monday after the opening weekend of "Treasure Planet," right up until she received a call from Disney executives canceling the sequel entirely.

It's easy to envision that fans of "Treasure Planet," who may be legion even if the film's box office doesn't suggest as much, would be disappointed at the loss of a "Treasure Planet" sequel. (It's worth noting that just a few years later, when now-ex-honcho John Lasseter joined Disney as a creative executive, he all but axed DisneyToon Studios and its direct-to-video sequels in full.) But for fans of Willem Dafoe, it didn't take too long to hear his voice in the world of Disney. Around six months after "Treasure Planet" flopped at the box office, Pixar's animated film "Finding Nemo," was released to rousing success in theaters; among its vast ensemble of actors was Dafoe, voicing the gruff but helpful aquarium fish Gill, whose daring spirit enables Nemo to escape his dentist's office trappings. Dafoe has since appeared in a couple of English-language dubs of Studio Ghibli films, such as "Tales from Earthsea" and "The Boy and the Heron," in addition to doing motion-capture and voice work for his "Finding Nemo" director Andrew Stanton on Disney's 2012 film "John Carter."

Still, we did come close to having Dafoe in the world of Disney Animation proper. (Falkenstein's interview implied he was literally 30 minutes away from his voiceover recording when she found out the film was canceled.) In the meantime, we can only imagine how perfectly apt his voice would be as a nefarious pirate. In the early 2000s, there was already enough evidence that Dafoe could be an amazingly charismatic villain, like when he played the Green Goblin in Sam Raimi's first "Spider-Man" film earlier in 2002. But while we came close, the "Treasure Planet" sequel ultimately joined the annals of so many other ideas and titles that very nearly existed yet never got fully off the animated ground.