How dark and daring gamble The Black Cauldron became a notorious Disney flop

What is certain is that The Black Cauldron aimed to be a different kind of Disney film. “Ron Miller, the former CEO of the company and the son-in-law of Walt Disney, wanted the film to be a departure,” Neil O’Brien, author of After Disney: Toil, Trouble, and the Transformation of America’s Favorite Media Company, tells the BBC. “He wanted it to appeal to a teenage, young-adult audience, and deliberately went about making sure there were no songs in the movie that could turn off teenage audiences.” 

The Black Cauldron also had a PG rating, a first for Disney. “That’s standard now, but it was very progressive in that regard, pushing boundaries to where animation could be,” Mindy Johnson, author of Ink & Paint: The Women of Walt Disney’s Animation, tells the BBC. “It feels strikingly dark. The Cauldron-Born scene is probably more macabre than anything they’d done in the past,” Dr Sam Summers, lecturer in Animation at Middlesex University, tells the BBC. 

Clashes at the studio

But things were getting dark behind the scenes, too. A new generation of graduates from the California Institute of the Arts, or CalArts, such as Brad Bird and John Lasseter (who later became driving forces at Pixar, directing The Incredibles and Toy Story respectively), wanted to bring a fresh aesthetic to the studio. But this led to clashes with the old guard, who were keen to maintain the status quo. “There were a lot of competing factions when Cauldron was underway,” says O’Brien. The mood at the studio shifted from highly optimistic to concerned.

Based on a five-book 1960s series, The Chronicles of Prydain, by Lloyd Alexander, adapting The Black Cauldron was a towering feat. “It was an epic narrative, and there were challenges winnowing that down in years of development,” says Johnson. It was also the first film to implement computer animation, including cauldron effects and a magical orb. And it was the first Disney film since 1959’s Sleeping Beauty to be in 70mm, which meant animators had larger and more expensive canvases to animate. They toyed with complicated and costly technology like a hologram system for cinemas to bring those born from the cauldron to life.