IIRC, I think he was talking about that hypothetical Medusa/Perseus movie from an earlier discussion in the thread about Greek mythology movies to replace Hercules. There was also the idea to have a movie about Hades and Persephone too. Of course, both of these movies are just concepts and not canon in the TL.
A Hippie in the House of Mouse (Jim Henson at Disney, 1980)
- Thread starter Geekhis Khan
- Start date
- Status
Here's an idea for an obscure-ish story that could go in Mythica - and has Disney relevance.
In the myths of the Nage people of Flores, there exist a race of forest-dwelling, dwarfish ape-men called the ebu gogo - a common feature in ebu gogo stories is the ebu gogo kidnapping children in hope to learn the secret of man's red fire. The children usually outwit their ebu gogo captors and escape.
Take a guess what song the king of the ebu gogo could sing... I'll give you a clue, "Obee doo, I wan'na be like..."?
In the myths of the Nage people of Flores, there exist a race of forest-dwelling, dwarfish ape-men called the ebu gogo - a common feature in ebu gogo stories is the ebu gogo kidnapping children in hope to learn the secret of man's red fire. The children usually outwit their ebu gogo captors and escape.
Take a guess what song the king of the ebu gogo could sing... I'll give you a clue, "Obee doo, I wan'na be like..."?
Hooked on a Feeling
Getting Hooked!! (1990)
From Nostalgia was Way Better when I was a Kid Netsite, August 19th, 2003
Peter Pan Syndrome is a condition where an adult feels like they are still a kid. They still engage in behavior associated with childhood and like childish things. Famous people with Peter Pan Syndrome included the late, great Michael Jackson and the producer/director Steven Spielberg.
But not me. I’m a perfectly adapted and well-adjusted adult who just happens to make some supplemental income talking about things from my childhood. Those aren’t “toys” on my shelf, by the way, they’re valuable collectors’ items, mint-in-the-box! This entire Netlog isn’t just my massive self-therapy attempt to wallow in my lost youth and deny the soulless cubicle-confined reality of adulthood by nostalgically reliving all my favorite childhood movies, no, sir!
Get off my case!!!
Ahem. Anyway, Spielberg, unlike me, actually did suffer from the syndrome and had a longstanding personal connection to the J.M. Barrie character. His mother used to read him Peter and Wendy as a bedtime story. He directed a stage production of Peter Pan for his school at age 11. He called Peter Pan the inspiration for all flying superheroes.
The dude likes Peter Pan, is what I’m saying.
But adulthood is a bitch, even when your job is creating “childish” things like kids’ movies and summer blockbusters. Here’s how he put it:
“I think a lot of people today are losing their imagination because they are work-driven. They are so self-involved with work and success and arriving at the next plateau that children and family almost become incidental. I have even experienced it myself when I have been on a very tough shoot and I've not seen my kids except on weekends. They ask for my time and I can't give it to them because I'm working.[1]”
So, in the early ‘80s he had an idea for a Peter Pan film, but one where Peter was grown up and working and had forgotten that he was, in fact, actually Peter Pan! Pretty Meta, am I right? He sold it to Disney in the early ‘80s, and considered making it as a musical starring the aforementioned Michael Jackson[2]. Obviously, this all morphed into Pan: the 4D Experience, as MJ didn’t want to play Peter as an adult who worked as a corporate lawyer. But the idea of an adult Peter stuck with Spielberg, and he and Disney creative head Jim Henson put the idea on the backburner. When MJ tragically passed, he abandoned the idea “permanently”.
“When we lost Michael,” he said, “The idea of ever producing or directing anything with Peter Pan just hurt. I couldn’t separate the man from the character. And yet, the idea just wouldn’t let go.”
So, when MGM’s Bernie Brillstein came to him in late ’88 looking for an idea to fill a summer schedule gap in the 1990 lineup, the “adult Peter Pan” idea came right back up[3]. While he felt like he couldn’t work on it directly thanks to the painful associations, he knew that he “had to do this, as therapy, if nothing else.” Spielberg became the Executive Producer and assigned Lisa Henson as Producer, who, he felt, “had the heart of a child and the laser focus of an adult.” James V. Hart was hired to write the initial screenplay and, after considering Frank Oz, they decided to hand the director’s chair to Spielberg’s friend, the talented writer and up-and-coming director Chris Columbus[4].
The result, obviously, was 1990’s Hooked!
Essentially this, but directed by Chris Columbus
Hart and Columbus took Spielberg’s core idea and ran with it, bringing in Carrie Fischer and Joss Whedon to punch up the dialog. What emerged was a story of Peter Pan revisiting Wendy as an adult and falling in love with her granddaughter Moira, who is a free-spirited Hippie type with a childlike sense of wonder. But over time, the Boy Who Never Grows Up, well, grows up. And as Peter grows, he becomes absorbed with his career, becoming a corporate lawyer, and he loses his ability to fly and his memory of Neverland and starts to lose contact with his own son Jack and daughter Maggie. Hart, influenced by an idea from his son Jake, also envisioned a scenario where Captain Hook would be alive, having bested Tick-Tock, and thus was there to again be the principal villain.
Though he was the Executive Producer and had “sworn off” involvement, Spielberg couldn’t resist getting involved on occasion, particularly in the set design. “We built a whole pirate ship and Lost Boy tree city,” said Columbus, “and an elaborate set of practical Rube Goldberg effects. We took up like 20-some sound stages. Mickey gave us $50 million, and we burned through most of that on sets and effects.” They’d top $70 million before they were finished.
How to burn $70 million without even trying (Image source Pinterest)
“I had to chase him off the set,” Lisa Henson said in an interview, a wry smirk on her face. “‘Produce or don’t, Steve,’ I told him, ‘but make a choice and stick with it!’”
While Spielberg got caught up in the set design, Lisa did the heavy lifting on production, working directly with Columbus and cementing what would become a long-running professional working relationship. They went with Robin Williams as the “well, duh” choice to play Peter Banning/Pan, up-and-coming actress Julia Roberts[5] as Tinkerbell, the amazing Maggie Smith as “Granny” Wendy Darling, the unforgettable Tim Curry as Captain Hook, and Bob Hoskins as his man Smee. At the recommendation of Henson, who’d seen him in Uncle Buck and See You in the Morning, Columbus brought in Macaulay Culkin to play Peter’s son Jack. They also brought in Anna Slotky as daughter Maggie and Catherine O'Hara as Jack’s wife Moira. Zachary Pym Williams, Robin’s son, played Young Peter in a flashback while Soleil Moon Frye played young Moira. And for the role of Rufio, leader of the Lost Boys, they brought in Dante Basco.
Williams, needless to say, was brilliant as Peter, and shines as a deeply human character thanks to Columbus’s direction. We meet him at the beginning as the work-obsessed Peter Banning, a lawyer for a major New York financial firm. He’s always away at the office or in court while his increasingly estranged wife Moira is busy running a New Age shop in Greenwich Village. O’Hara is delightful, being both a loving mother, but also a distracted hippie who is more in touch with the astral plane than her own kids. But it would be Culkin, who’d become a go-to actor for Columbus after this, who steals the movie as the 9-year-old son Jack who, due to his father’s absence, has missed out on childhood and become exceedingly mature for his age. Culkin’s dry wit combined with Jack’s habit of dressing in conservative suits make him an anti-Peter, The Boy Who Grew Up Too Fast. He prefers the Wall Street Journal to Dr. Seuss and dreams of being a “Chief Financial Officer for a Fortune 500 company.”
(Image source “icantunseethatmovie.com”)
But while Peter can leave Neverland, he can’t leave it behind. In what may be a metatextual reference to Spielberg’s own relationship with the Pan character, Peter is soon pulled back into Neverland when Captain Hook kidnaps Jack and Maggie while the family is visiting “Granny Wendy” in London. Despite having lost his memory of his time as Peter Pan, Tinkerbell appears to drag the reluctant Peter back to Neverland to resume his role as Peter Pan and save his kids and Neverland alike from the nefarious Captain Hook. There he’s (re)introduced to the Lost Boys, now led by Rufio, who is none-too-happy to see Peter return. Roberts literally shines as a rather lusty and impish, but still childlike Tink. Curry is just-hammy-and-evil-in-the-right-way as Hook, with a mix of frightening and ludicrous that made him a credible threat, but not complete nightmare juice. Basco is a brilliant foil for Peter and holds his own alongside Williams and Curry.
But Peter can’t fly now. He’s not just a physical adult, he’s lost touch with the childlike sense of wonder that made him Pan. Even his shadow, brilliantly animated by the Disney Creatureworks, isn’t having it. The Lost Boys won’t accept him. Tink is both a mentor and a pain in the ass, as she is obviously still hurt and jealous of Moira. And Hook soon begins an even more nefarious and cruel plan to attack Peter where it hurts most: by effectively adopting his children into the Pirate’s Life (“Think of Piracy as a ‘Hostile Takeover’, but without all the paperwork,” Hook tells Jack), becoming a replacement father figure for Jack and Maggie. Jack, who had a father-shaped hole in his life, is particularly susceptible to this manipulation, even as his younger sister Maggie resists and remains his tentative tie back to his real family.
And needless to say, Peter has to rediscover his childlike nature, giving him the ability to not just fly and use the Power of His Imagination, but win back the love of his son Jack and defeat Captain Hook. It’s not exactly the world’s most innovative plot all said, but the concept is brilliant and with Columbus’s steady hand at the wheel, the film delivers a fun, fast-paced, free-spirited, and heartwarming story. The cast is practically perfect in every way, and it’s laugh-out-loud funny to see Culkin acting the stoically serious adult in contrast to the later childlike antics of Williams. Seeing Peter and Jack learning how to be kids again together, particularly with Jack’s birth being the “moment of true happiness” that lets Peter unlock all of his abilities, becomes one of the most heartwarming things in cinema history. The set design is brilliant and noteworthy as perhaps the Last of the Great Practical Sets before CG began its unfettered conquest of the Silver Screen (parts of the set would eventually see new life in a Disneytown). It’s really no wonder that this would become the number one film of 1990, topping $500 million at the box office, and remains a classic to this day.
The film catapulted Culkin to superstardom and cemented Julia Roberts, then still largely unknown, as a bankable star. Chris Columbus became the “it” director, and quickly spun off his own 1492 Productions company, which was behind many of the greatest films of the next two decades, coming to rival Amblin itself. It was Lisa Henson’s most successful production yet, gaining her lots of positive attention in both the press and in Hollywood circles, leading directly to her later breakout as a studio executive. And it was, to quote Spielberg, “exactly the high-priced therapy that I needed.”
Hooked! is beloved to this day. I’d like to say that I was there on opening day, cheering along with the crowds, but I’d be a lying sack of pixie dust. I was a teenager at the time and was your typical little “too cool for school” asshole (and actively suppressing my love of geeky things like I was hiding a horrible disease), so it flew under my radar at the time. But kids these days consider it one of the most transformational films of their childhood, and I totally get why. I’ve seen it as an adult, and with my own kids, so yea, totally with you all.
My son and I have seen it a hundred times.
[1] Actual quote from our timeline. Read it here.
[2] All as in our timeline so far. In our timeline Disney dropped the idea after Eisner and Wells took over and Spielberg took it to other studios, ultimately leading to Our Timeline’s Hook, obviously.
[3] This is very Meta: I’d originally planned on butterflying or delaying Hook based on the Pan 4D attraction, but while moving around pictures between times and studios as the timeline evolved, I suddenly found myself with a gap in the MGM Summer 1990 schedule that I needed to fill, so suddenly Hook was resurrected!
[4] John Hughes will instead hand Home Alone to Patrick Read Johnson as he wanted in our timeline, as Spaced Invaders is being produced by Fantasia and directed by Ken Kwapis. More on Home Alone later.
[5] In our timeline when she played the role in 1991, she was suddenly the “it” girl following Pretty Woman the year before and was on one hand hounded by the press and on the other hand going through a painful breakup, which negatively affected her performance and led to emotional breakdowns on the set which led in turn to the “Tinkerhell” stories. Here she’s still a relative unknown and in a better mental place, and thus her performance will be more along the lines of her free spirited, charming, and sultry performance in Pretty Woman. Also, some Disney advances in green screen compositing will lead to better visual integration of Tink into the story.
From Nostalgia was Way Better when I was a Kid Netsite, August 19th, 2003
Peter Pan Syndrome is a condition where an adult feels like they are still a kid. They still engage in behavior associated with childhood and like childish things. Famous people with Peter Pan Syndrome included the late, great Michael Jackson and the producer/director Steven Spielberg.
But not me. I’m a perfectly adapted and well-adjusted adult who just happens to make some supplemental income talking about things from my childhood. Those aren’t “toys” on my shelf, by the way, they’re valuable collectors’ items, mint-in-the-box! This entire Netlog isn’t just my massive self-therapy attempt to wallow in my lost youth and deny the soulless cubicle-confined reality of adulthood by nostalgically reliving all my favorite childhood movies, no, sir!
Get off my case!!!
Ahem. Anyway, Spielberg, unlike me, actually did suffer from the syndrome and had a longstanding personal connection to the J.M. Barrie character. His mother used to read him Peter and Wendy as a bedtime story. He directed a stage production of Peter Pan for his school at age 11. He called Peter Pan the inspiration for all flying superheroes.
The dude likes Peter Pan, is what I’m saying.
But adulthood is a bitch, even when your job is creating “childish” things like kids’ movies and summer blockbusters. Here’s how he put it:
“I think a lot of people today are losing their imagination because they are work-driven. They are so self-involved with work and success and arriving at the next plateau that children and family almost become incidental. I have even experienced it myself when I have been on a very tough shoot and I've not seen my kids except on weekends. They ask for my time and I can't give it to them because I'm working.[1]”
So, in the early ‘80s he had an idea for a Peter Pan film, but one where Peter was grown up and working and had forgotten that he was, in fact, actually Peter Pan! Pretty Meta, am I right? He sold it to Disney in the early ‘80s, and considered making it as a musical starring the aforementioned Michael Jackson[2]. Obviously, this all morphed into Pan: the 4D Experience, as MJ didn’t want to play Peter as an adult who worked as a corporate lawyer. But the idea of an adult Peter stuck with Spielberg, and he and Disney creative head Jim Henson put the idea on the backburner. When MJ tragically passed, he abandoned the idea “permanently”.
“When we lost Michael,” he said, “The idea of ever producing or directing anything with Peter Pan just hurt. I couldn’t separate the man from the character. And yet, the idea just wouldn’t let go.”
So, when MGM’s Bernie Brillstein came to him in late ’88 looking for an idea to fill a summer schedule gap in the 1990 lineup, the “adult Peter Pan” idea came right back up[3]. While he felt like he couldn’t work on it directly thanks to the painful associations, he knew that he “had to do this, as therapy, if nothing else.” Spielberg became the Executive Producer and assigned Lisa Henson as Producer, who, he felt, “had the heart of a child and the laser focus of an adult.” James V. Hart was hired to write the initial screenplay and, after considering Frank Oz, they decided to hand the director’s chair to Spielberg’s friend, the talented writer and up-and-coming director Chris Columbus[4].
The result, obviously, was 1990’s Hooked!
Essentially this, but directed by Chris Columbus
Hart and Columbus took Spielberg’s core idea and ran with it, bringing in Carrie Fischer and Joss Whedon to punch up the dialog. What emerged was a story of Peter Pan revisiting Wendy as an adult and falling in love with her granddaughter Moira, who is a free-spirited Hippie type with a childlike sense of wonder. But over time, the Boy Who Never Grows Up, well, grows up. And as Peter grows, he becomes absorbed with his career, becoming a corporate lawyer, and he loses his ability to fly and his memory of Neverland and starts to lose contact with his own son Jack and daughter Maggie. Hart, influenced by an idea from his son Jake, also envisioned a scenario where Captain Hook would be alive, having bested Tick-Tock, and thus was there to again be the principal villain.
Though he was the Executive Producer and had “sworn off” involvement, Spielberg couldn’t resist getting involved on occasion, particularly in the set design. “We built a whole pirate ship and Lost Boy tree city,” said Columbus, “and an elaborate set of practical Rube Goldberg effects. We took up like 20-some sound stages. Mickey gave us $50 million, and we burned through most of that on sets and effects.” They’d top $70 million before they were finished.
How to burn $70 million without even trying (Image source Pinterest)
“I had to chase him off the set,” Lisa Henson said in an interview, a wry smirk on her face. “‘Produce or don’t, Steve,’ I told him, ‘but make a choice and stick with it!’”
While Spielberg got caught up in the set design, Lisa did the heavy lifting on production, working directly with Columbus and cementing what would become a long-running professional working relationship. They went with Robin Williams as the “well, duh” choice to play Peter Banning/Pan, up-and-coming actress Julia Roberts[5] as Tinkerbell, the amazing Maggie Smith as “Granny” Wendy Darling, the unforgettable Tim Curry as Captain Hook, and Bob Hoskins as his man Smee. At the recommendation of Henson, who’d seen him in Uncle Buck and See You in the Morning, Columbus brought in Macaulay Culkin to play Peter’s son Jack. They also brought in Anna Slotky as daughter Maggie and Catherine O'Hara as Jack’s wife Moira. Zachary Pym Williams, Robin’s son, played Young Peter in a flashback while Soleil Moon Frye played young Moira. And for the role of Rufio, leader of the Lost Boys, they brought in Dante Basco.
Williams, needless to say, was brilliant as Peter, and shines as a deeply human character thanks to Columbus’s direction. We meet him at the beginning as the work-obsessed Peter Banning, a lawyer for a major New York financial firm. He’s always away at the office or in court while his increasingly estranged wife Moira is busy running a New Age shop in Greenwich Village. O’Hara is delightful, being both a loving mother, but also a distracted hippie who is more in touch with the astral plane than her own kids. But it would be Culkin, who’d become a go-to actor for Columbus after this, who steals the movie as the 9-year-old son Jack who, due to his father’s absence, has missed out on childhood and become exceedingly mature for his age. Culkin’s dry wit combined with Jack’s habit of dressing in conservative suits make him an anti-Peter, The Boy Who Grew Up Too Fast. He prefers the Wall Street Journal to Dr. Seuss and dreams of being a “Chief Financial Officer for a Fortune 500 company.”
(Image source “icantunseethatmovie.com”)
But while Peter can leave Neverland, he can’t leave it behind. In what may be a metatextual reference to Spielberg’s own relationship with the Pan character, Peter is soon pulled back into Neverland when Captain Hook kidnaps Jack and Maggie while the family is visiting “Granny Wendy” in London. Despite having lost his memory of his time as Peter Pan, Tinkerbell appears to drag the reluctant Peter back to Neverland to resume his role as Peter Pan and save his kids and Neverland alike from the nefarious Captain Hook. There he’s (re)introduced to the Lost Boys, now led by Rufio, who is none-too-happy to see Peter return. Roberts literally shines as a rather lusty and impish, but still childlike Tink. Curry is just-hammy-and-evil-in-the-right-way as Hook, with a mix of frightening and ludicrous that made him a credible threat, but not complete nightmare juice. Basco is a brilliant foil for Peter and holds his own alongside Williams and Curry.
But Peter can’t fly now. He’s not just a physical adult, he’s lost touch with the childlike sense of wonder that made him Pan. Even his shadow, brilliantly animated by the Disney Creatureworks, isn’t having it. The Lost Boys won’t accept him. Tink is both a mentor and a pain in the ass, as she is obviously still hurt and jealous of Moira. And Hook soon begins an even more nefarious and cruel plan to attack Peter where it hurts most: by effectively adopting his children into the Pirate’s Life (“Think of Piracy as a ‘Hostile Takeover’, but without all the paperwork,” Hook tells Jack), becoming a replacement father figure for Jack and Maggie. Jack, who had a father-shaped hole in his life, is particularly susceptible to this manipulation, even as his younger sister Maggie resists and remains his tentative tie back to his real family.
And needless to say, Peter has to rediscover his childlike nature, giving him the ability to not just fly and use the Power of His Imagination, but win back the love of his son Jack and defeat Captain Hook. It’s not exactly the world’s most innovative plot all said, but the concept is brilliant and with Columbus’s steady hand at the wheel, the film delivers a fun, fast-paced, free-spirited, and heartwarming story. The cast is practically perfect in every way, and it’s laugh-out-loud funny to see Culkin acting the stoically serious adult in contrast to the later childlike antics of Williams. Seeing Peter and Jack learning how to be kids again together, particularly with Jack’s birth being the “moment of true happiness” that lets Peter unlock all of his abilities, becomes one of the most heartwarming things in cinema history. The set design is brilliant and noteworthy as perhaps the Last of the Great Practical Sets before CG began its unfettered conquest of the Silver Screen (parts of the set would eventually see new life in a Disneytown). It’s really no wonder that this would become the number one film of 1990, topping $500 million at the box office, and remains a classic to this day.
The film catapulted Culkin to superstardom and cemented Julia Roberts, then still largely unknown, as a bankable star. Chris Columbus became the “it” director, and quickly spun off his own 1492 Productions company, which was behind many of the greatest films of the next two decades, coming to rival Amblin itself. It was Lisa Henson’s most successful production yet, gaining her lots of positive attention in both the press and in Hollywood circles, leading directly to her later breakout as a studio executive. And it was, to quote Spielberg, “exactly the high-priced therapy that I needed.”
Hooked! is beloved to this day. I’d like to say that I was there on opening day, cheering along with the crowds, but I’d be a lying sack of pixie dust. I was a teenager at the time and was your typical little “too cool for school” asshole (and actively suppressing my love of geeky things like I was hiding a horrible disease), so it flew under my radar at the time. But kids these days consider it one of the most transformational films of their childhood, and I totally get why. I’ve seen it as an adult, and with my own kids, so yea, totally with you all.
My son and I have seen it a hundred times.
[1] Actual quote from our timeline. Read it here.
[2] All as in our timeline so far. In our timeline Disney dropped the idea after Eisner and Wells took over and Spielberg took it to other studios, ultimately leading to Our Timeline’s Hook, obviously.
[3] This is very Meta: I’d originally planned on butterflying or delaying Hook based on the Pan 4D attraction, but while moving around pictures between times and studios as the timeline evolved, I suddenly found myself with a gap in the MGM Summer 1990 schedule that I needed to fill, so suddenly Hook was resurrected!
[4] John Hughes will instead hand Home Alone to Patrick Read Johnson as he wanted in our timeline, as Spaced Invaders is being produced by Fantasia and directed by Ken Kwapis. More on Home Alone later.
[5] In our timeline when she played the role in 1991, she was suddenly the “it” girl following Pretty Woman the year before and was on one hand hounded by the press and on the other hand going through a painful breakup, which negatively affected her performance and led to emotional breakdowns on the set which led in turn to the “Tinkerhell” stories. Here she’s still a relative unknown and in a better mental place, and thus her performance will be more along the lines of her free spirited, charming, and sultry performance in Pretty Woman. Also, some Disney advances in green screen compositing will lead to better visual integration of Tink into the story.
I wasn't a cynical teen when the movie came out OTL (and even when I was I couldn't hide my geekiness, hell I was reading Doctor Who novels in class) but I always thought if I'd been a couple of years younger I'd have loved Hook and latert be a defender. Instead I didn't hate it but was disappointed, really only liking Hoffman and Hoskins' performances. TTL me would definitely like it.
Today I learned that Hook as we see it IOTL almost became a Disney movie instead of going to TriStar.
Honestly? That would explain a lot...
Honestly? That would explain a lot...
Damm Hooked made for $70m and "the number one film of 1990, topping $500 million at the box office" -that is SERIOUS blockbuster territory!
Surprised execs and shareholders are not screaming for a sequel at that level of success.
Thanks for the furture hints and drips there. V. glad Lisa Henson does ok from this. Colombus is going to have his pick of projects. Good the cast do well as well. I just hope Williams particularly does well.
I'd probably go and see this as a late night post pub laugh kinda deal.
Very cool update @Geekhis Khan .
Surprised execs and shareholders are not screaming for a sequel at that level of success.
Thanks for the furture hints and drips there. V. glad Lisa Henson does ok from this. Colombus is going to have his pick of projects. Good the cast do well as well. I just hope Williams particularly does well.
I'd probably go and see this as a late night post pub laugh kinda deal.
Very cool update @Geekhis Khan .
It sounds like Disney will possibly be doing Richie Rich (which is owned by Marvel ITTL.)
It was also supposed to be set in the same world that Gargoyles resided it, albeit close to a century earlier; had it been picked up we may have had some crossover (what with the near-unkillable immortals like Macbeth and Demona, or that thing with Brooklyn going on time-travel adventures with the Phoenix Gate), but who knows for sure? Besides, any timeline in which The Goliath Chronicles is never made is better off for it.
The only objectively good part of TLBT getting franchised was Chomper, and that’s irrespective of the quality the movies featuring him had. But the big thing is that they all felt like extra-long episodes of a show (again, quality varying), whereas the original actually felt like a momentous and defining story for the characters.
Yeah, but they don’t buy toys and the like the way little ones might (assuming a desired toyline gets off the ground; look at Gargoyles and how they worked around stuff they were made to include, like the motorbike they blew up in its only episode, or the Eye of Odin…) And I know it’s ridiculous how much success is predicated by merchandise and other external factors that make money, but it’s how a lot of executives think; Young Justice was originally canned at least partially because the audience was more teens and girls than WB expected, so the produced merchandise (which was mostly aimed at preteen boys) wasn’t selling like they wanted. And consider how Star Wars makes most of its money off toy sales (and from what I’ve heard the Sequel Trilogy line didn’t sell too great, at least not compared to earlier ones or even the demand that “Baby Yoda” suddenly brought upon them)…
Considering that The Goliath Chronicles aired between 1996 and 1997 while Disney's Atlantis didn't debut until 2001 so we can still both The Goliath Chronicles and Team Atlantis.
Nothing wrong with that considering that Jim Henson wasn't a big fan of tv series made just to sell merchandise. Plus toys aren't the only merchandise out there.
And Jim Henson (ITTL) isn't one of them.
That may be a reflection of how shit the sequel trilogy was compared to the others.
Jim Henson isn't the only one with any say-so (especially since it's been repeatedly hinted that he'll stumble at least once in the early 1990s and back a big flop). And, fundamentally, companies are producing these shows to make money, and the job of executives is to make sure that they do make money (not that they are always perfect or even good at doing so, but that's their role as opposed to creating the shows in the first place). Now, it's easy to deplore all that and lament how art for art's sake is being neglected, but...there's never been a pure "art for art's sake" environment, anywhere, in any of history. Art is always shaped by the financial environment around it, because artists always need to either be wealthy themselves or be able to engage wealth (whether individually or collectively) to create their art. So, fundamentally, you need someone who is willing to step back and focus on "are we making money?" to sustain something as expensive and multi-faceted as television or movie productions over the long run. Otherwise you get people whose swollen egos leads them to think they're being brilliant as they're charging off the cliff into (financial) disaster.
I was only skimming the thread and I read that as being a reference to the Hooked post. Personally, I think Captain Hook being part of the Gargoyles universe is a pretty decent crossover.
Well, if him meeting Don Karnage in an episode of Raw Toonage wouldn't fix you up, that might.
Of course, all this runs into one of the major problems with Hollywood -- and it's a problem Jim's run into before ITTL and IOTL: Reputation is a damned fickle thing, and you're only as good as your last production. This foreshadowed flop (and I'm hoping it's not Toys because I actually really liked that movie IOTL) is going to take away some of his creative freedom until he can prove it was a fluke; he won't have as much money to throw around on his next project.
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Interesting how a sudden gap in a movie lineup (both in-universe and out-of-universe) acted as therapy for Steven Spielberg after MJ's tragic passing. I guess he was hooked into that project.....hahahaha 🪝
Although, I'm surprised at how well this movie turned out despite being mostly an afterthought. I guess that's just the genius of having people like Lisa Henson and Steven Spielberg at the works. Not to mention, Robin Williams as Peter Pan! I guess the blockbuster status of this movie wasn't as much of a fluke as I thought.
Also, Macaulay Culkin is in this film? I actually kinda like it since he's probably make a good Jack but butterflies are afoot for Home Alone. I can't wait to see how that turns out ITTL!
Although, I'm surprised at how well this movie turned out despite being mostly an afterthought. I guess that's just the genius of having people like Lisa Henson and Steven Spielberg at the works. Not to mention, Robin Williams as Peter Pan! I guess the blockbuster status of this movie wasn't as much of a fluke as I thought.
Also, Macaulay Culkin is in this film? I actually kinda like it since he's probably make a good Jack but butterflies are afoot for Home Alone. I can't wait to see how that turns out ITTL!
Is no one gonna mention Tim Curry as Hook? That's a definite win in any TL!
Also reminds me of his role as the same character in Fox's Peter Pan & the Pirates, most likely butterflied here.
Also reminds me of his role as the same character in Fox's Peter Pan & the Pirates, most likely butterflied here.
I mean, wouldn’t it basically just be him doing his role as Long John Silver from OTL, but with a hook?
Curry played Hook in Fox's Peter Pan in our timeline
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Speaking of which, will Fox Kids still exist ITTL? Or at least an equivalent to it?
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