The Ink ran dry: An Animation&Film TL

Chapter 1: The beginning of the end
This TL starts in 1966.

Walt Disney died on December 15th 1966 and that day America wept, but little did people know it was only the beginning of the end; 1967 was filled with flops such as Monkeys Go Home and The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin but a saving grace came with the Jungle Book. The Jungle Book runs the same as OTL but with Ringo voicing Flaps, Mick Jagger voicing Dizzie, Eric Clapton voicing Buzzie ,and George Harrison voicing Ziggy; the film received positive reviews and made $37,500,000 at the box office. The last profitable picture that Disney released during the 60's was The Love Bug, which grossed 51 million dollars against a 5 million dollar budget.

But during the 70's everything went to hell, though you wouldn't have guessed that at first; Aristocats, released on December 11th 1970, grossed $28,000,000 dollars worldwide, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Blackbeard's Ghost were successes at the Box-Office, and Walt Disney World had a massive opening. However Roy O. Disney passed away on October 11th 1970 and the company was passed on to Donn Tatum and Card Walker, their tenures caused the collapse of the Disney company; first Disney turned down American Graffiti, released by Warner Bros. on August 11th 1973 the film grossed $140,000,000 and received positive reviews, instead Disney pumped out their standard live action fare all of which weren't notable and flopped.

Robin Hood's release, on November 8th 1973, was a bit of hope as it did gross 32 million dollars against a 5 million dollar budget, which destroyed Hanna-Barbara's Charlotte's Web which only grossed $3,000,000 worldwide; Disney began spending a lot of money on an adaption of The Chronicles of Prydain which was scheduled for a December 1978 release. However whilst Disney was making The Chronicles of Prydain Hanna-Barbara was adapting Escape to Witch Mountain, HB bought the rights to said book in 1971; the next year (1974) Disney also had an adaptation of the Book Miss Bianca in the Arctic planned, it was a B-scale picture with Louis Prima attached to it. The budget for Chronicles of Prydain by the end of 1974 was up to $12,000,000.

Whilst Miss Bianca had its production go smoothly, The Chronicles of Prydain didn't as its budget ballooned; many at Disney either wanted to sell Prydain, co-produce it with another studio (the most commonly mentioned were EMI, Columbia, United Artists, Warner Bros., and Paramount), or cancel it. However neither of the choices were made and on May 8th, 1976, after Prydain's budget rose to $28,000,000, it was decided to cancel Bianca and lay-off several animators, Don Bluth was one of them.

On June 22nd 1977 Escape to Witch Mountain, produced by Hanna-Barbara, directed by John Pomeroy, and released by Columbia Pictures in the USA and by Columbia/Warner/EMI internationally. The film's plot is much more close to the book ITTL and features the following voice cast

Mike Evans: Father O' Day
Kim Richards: Tia Malone
Ike Eisenmann: Tony Malone
Ray Milland: Aristotle Bolt

Escape to Witch Mountain grossed $25,000,000 against a $7,000,000 dollar budget and received positive reviews.
 
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Chapter 2: Star Wars, Superman, and Tri-Star 1977-1979
Before I start this update I'd like to state ITTL Tommy wasn't the last film to use the 1936 Columbia Pictures Logo; ITTL it was Escape to Witch Mountain.

1977: Was the year Hollywood was shaken up; Star Wars was released on May 25 1977 by Warner Bros.. Star Wars grossed $400,000,000 worldwide in its first run; the film struggled to find a distributor as Lucas went to studios like 20th Century Fox, which was the first to reject him, to AIP and Disney, the latter of which didn't want Star Wars because they thought no one would take it seriously. Star Wars runs the same as OTL and received positive reviews; Star Wars and American Graffiti used this logo at the start
though they both used the Steiner fanfare.

Meanwhile at Disney Ron Miller began advocating the formation of a second label for more mature films but this was turned down; Miller's conversations with Donn Tatum and Card Walker were recorded in what were nicknamed "The Touchstone Tapes" as Tatum and Walker in said conversations called the proposed division "Touchstone Pictures" to mock Miller as they thought the idea was dumb.

Miller: "Guys we have to do this, Warner just came out with Star Wars, and Paramount..."
Tatum: "No! I don't care what Warner and Paramount are doing; we're making art, they aren't"
Walker: "Prydan will out class Superman, they aint got stars; so I could give a nickle what Paramount is doing"
Miller: "You both don't what you're doing; for god's sake Tr..."
Tatum: "AH! Touchstone"
Miller: "Its what Walt would have wanted."
Tatum: "Soil the company with dirty language and violence? Fat chance mister."
Miller: " I've had enough, you both treat me like I'm dumb."
Walker: "Anit that a shame!"

As 1978 approached Chronicles of Prydan wasn't ready and the directors were swapped almost everyday, to the point where it was called "Disney Doe" by pissed off animators; compounding problems, Superman was released on December 15th 1978 and it grossed $350,000,000, it runs the same as OTL excluding the fact that ITTL instead of opening up with the Warner Bros. logo it opens up with a black and white version of the 1976 Paramount logo and Kirk Allen plays Jor-El. Superman received positive reviews, Superman's success caused Ron Miller and Diane Disney Miller to leave the company and start their own studio; they made their way to St. Louis, Missouri along with Roy E. Disney and Lillian Marie Disney and formed a studio.

That studio is TriStar Pictures, Ron would serve as CEO, Diane would serve as President, and Roy would be Head of Production; TriStar, formed January 8th 1979, signed a distribution deal with Columbia Pictures, a television broadcast rights deal with CBS, and a cable broadcast rights deal with HBO. Immediately TriStar hired animators who were fired from Disney such as Don Bluth and Gary Goldman and Roy began asking for film ideas from animators, Bluth stood and said one word, "Bianca". TriStar acquired the rights to the old script for Miss Bianca and production on The Rescuers Began.
 
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Chapter 3: 1979-1980
Tri-Star signed a 4 film deal with Director Steven Spielberg and agreed to distribute Rockshow, though this wasn't their entire lineup of films they had planned; their line up is listed here

1979:
1941
The Rose

1980:
Fatso
Rockshow (The Soundtrack will be issued by Columbia Records in the US)
Midnight Madness
* Friday the 13th (Co-Produced with New Line Cinema and released by Orion)
Last Flight of Noah's Ark
Xanadu
Flash Gordon

1981:
Raiders of the Lost Ark (Will be released by Warner Bros.)
Galaxy Express 999
Knightriders
Friday The 13th Part 2 (Co-Produced with New Line Cinema, the last installment to be released by Orion)
Mommie Dearest
Heavy Metal (Co-Produced with Nelvana, released by 20th Century Fox)

* First film to use a proper logo

On April 1, 1979 Nickelodeon launched

Back on the Disney front, it looked like Prydain would finished soon with progress on the film getting to 60%; the spending on the film had ballooned to $45,000,000.
However by August 1979 things went back to being hell when Lloyd Alexander and Disney's executives got into shouting matches about changes Disney made; The script was very dark and very heavy but Alexander wanted them to lighten the script as he found the script to be to much of downer, despite its happy ending.
What made things worse was Lord of the Rings Part 1; released on August 18th, 1979, the film runs similar to Lord of the Rings but with differences. The film ends after Legolas states, "They're taking the Hobbits to Isengard"; Led Zeppelin preforms the soundtrack, The film isn't rotoscoped, and Saruman is never referred to as Aruman. Costing $5,000,000, Lord of the Rings Part 1 grossed $32,000,000 worldwide and received mixed to positive reviews. Lord of the Rings' success led to Disney justifying its heavy script to Alexander.

December 14th saw 1941 being released by Tri-Star; ITTL the 146 minute version of the film is released, the film received negative reviews and only earned $12,000,000 on a $35,000,000 budget. After hearing that 1941 flopped, Donn Tatum jumped for joy; however he wouldn't jump for long. The Rose was released on December 20th 1979; the film runs the same as OTL; The Rose grossed $30,000,000 on a $9,300,000 budget and received positive reviews.

And like that 1979 was over; Tri-Star had a taste of success and failure, Disney was producing the Titanic 2.0, Nickelodeon launched, and Lord of The Rings was steadily getting in the mainstream.
 
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