Kingdom of the Sun

The Disney studios often found inspiration in Japanese anime. So much so that their hit The Lion King is an obvious remake of Osamu Tezuka's Kimba the White Lion, down to the name of the protagonist. Soon afterwards, the universe of The Mysterious Cities of Gold may have inspired director Roger Allers for a project launched in 1997 called Kingdom of the Sun.

The genesis and eventual demise of the film was told in a rather obscure 2002 documentary called The Sweatbox that Disney did not see fit to release on home video. The sweatbox, as the prologue explains, was a room in the Disney studio in Burbank with no windows and no air conditioning where the artists would review their work on the moviola.

Owen Wilson as Pacha

To recapture the recipe of The Lion King, Sting was approached by the studio to write songs for the project before the script was finalized. The story was basically that of a young Inca named Pacha, “a lama herder who loves the sun. He believes there’s always a way to bring a light into any situation. Pacha comes to the city and when he’s put into a position of leadership, he transforms the city”. He takes the place of Manco the arrogant, self-centered Prince, in a Prince and the Pauper style of story, and the villain of the story, Yzma, turns Manco into a lama.

Prince Manco and the Pauper Pacha

Voices, music and songs were recorded, a good deal of the animation was done but before they completed the animation process, the studio had to greenlight their work.

Sting

It seems the animation department heads Tom Schumacher and Peter Schneider, once they were presented the full project on story reels, found there were problems with the pacing of the story and felt that it was not clear if they were making a drama or a comedy (among many other problems).

Director and composer in a staff meeting

Disappointed but challenged, the crew went back to work and went out to change some of the aspects of the film drastically. From 6 different outlines, they kept the core of the idea: a common man could teach an arrogant one how to be a good ruler. Manco became the main character and was given the new name of Kuzco (apparently Manco means “pussy” in Japanese and “bad movie” in Turkish) and the film was also renamed Kingdom IN the sun. Some characters were introduced (Kronk), others were changed (Pacha ages 20 years), and some were simply wiped out of the story (a talking talisman called Hucua), which took a definite turn for comedy.

Unfortunately, Roger Allers did not want to be part of the film now that it was changed so much, feeling, rightly so, that it was a different movie. Co-director Mark Dindal took over on his own but some of the crew, including Sting felt ill-at-ease about the changes, partly because he felt that his contribution was far from over, as he had previously thought. Since he had to concentrate on his album, he did not feel like writing whole new songs and so only two of the ones he had previously written were used.

A deleted character makes a cameo in the finished film

Andreas Deja felt the same and left his duties of animating Yzma which were taken over by Dale Bear.

Disney executives liked the new way the film was evolving but whole sections of the film like Pacha’s pregnant wife still were unclear and kept going back and forth between decisions which confused the assigned animators.

Once the film was almost completed, Mark Shaiman was hired to write the atmospheric score. Unfortunately his work was considered “too busy” and after rewrites proved ineffective, he was replaced by John Debney.

Here is a glimpse at the deleted musical sequence “Snuff out of the light” (available on the soundtrack) sung by Eartha Kitt whose other musical number “Perfect world” was also cut. Yet some scenes were used for the theatrical trailer for the film which was eventually released as The Emperor’s New Groove.

The new Pacha in the DVD deleted scene

It's interesting that, in the DVD special features, although they contain a short deleted scene (from the new version of the film though since it deals with the "new" Pacha) documentary featurettes, and a whole feature commentary, the fascinating story of the picture's erratic development is never evoked.

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That’s all for today folks!