The Shuffled Disneyverse: An Alt Disney Timeline

How are the other animations studios doing as of the late 50s?
Since Disney is the prime focus of my TL, I'm honestly not sure how other animation studios are doing in the 1950s. Perhaps with Disney being edgier and darker than OTL in the 1950s, maybe they decide to focus more on fantasy like Disney did IOTL?
 
Since Disney is the prime focus of my TL, I'm honestly not sure how other animation studios are doing in the 1950s. Perhaps with Disney being edgier and darker than OTL in the 1950s, maybe they decide to focus more on fantasy like Disney did IOTL?
Perhaps I could help you come up with some ideas?
 
Alice in Wonderland (1961)
Alice in Wonderland (1961)

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Walt Disney first read Lewis Carroll's Alice books as a child. In 1933, Disney considered making a full-length live-action/animation Alice film but canceled it in favor of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. In 1938, after Snow White’s success, he bought the rights to Alice in Wonderland and officially registered the title. David Hall finished a story reel by 1939, but Disney was displeased. He realized the extreme complexity of Alice so he scrapped the project. In 1957, with Atlantis deep into production, Disney looked for more works to adapt and chose to revive Alice in Wonderland. He was pleased with the story draft assigned to Bill Peet. With Atlantis disappointing critics and the box office, Disney was discussing shutting down the studio’s animation department. Meanwhile, Ub Iwerks experimented with a Xerox camera to aid in animation and modified one to directly transfer drawings to cels, saving both time and money. What it could not do was deviate from a black, scratchy outline nor recreate the lavishness of hand-inking. Ken Anderson proposed to use the Xerox for Alice to a disenchanted Walt. He approved but would grow to dislike the art style of Alice in Wonderland because he felt that the fantasy element of his previous works was lost.

Alice in Wonderland begins in Victorian England where a young girl named Alice finds a white rabbit yelling out loud that he is late. She follows him down a rabbit hole and freefalls into a corridor lined with doors. After messing with size-changing food and drinks, she creates an ocean out of her tears and uses it to escape through a mirror behind the smallest door. Once outside, she finds herself among talking plants, animals, and other strange creatures, some original and others from well-known nursery rhymes. While few are rational and mostly rude, she comes across the bizarre but well-meaning Mad Hatter and March Hare she comes across at the Mad Hatter’s grand Tea Party. They guide Alice to the Red Queen of Hearts' castle, the home of the infamous Wonderland tyrant who uses her Cheshire Cat to trick everyone, except the already insane Mad Hatter and March Hare, into deep madness so that they can't revolt against her reign. Unafraid of the Queen’s rule and the Cheshire Cat, and because only the Red Queen of Hearts knows how Alice can return home, Alice challenges the Queen to a croquet match and a life-sized game of Wonderland chess. If she loses both games, Alice will never be able to return home.

Alice in Wonderland premiered on July 26, 1961. Costing nearly $3.5 million, it doubled that at the box office. Despite positive reception among audiences at the time, critical reception was largely negative. Critics called Alice too episodic and the Xerox technique was panned for producing “low” animation quality. Worst of all, the world was thought of as overly sweet yet most of the characters seemed to lack any likeability or charm. When it was re-released in 1969, after Walt’s death, Alice in Wonderland saw its critical reception vastly improve. It also broke records when released on home video in the 1980s. But the damage was done and Walt Disney was crushed by the early critical pans of the film. It only validated Walt’s hatred of the movie, not only the animation but the characters, plot, pacing, and virtually everything else. It had been one of his favorite childhood stories and this was the result? He never forgave Ken Anderson for his suggestion and quit animation once and for all to focus on theme parks and television programming. Finally, Alice’s perceived failure led Walt to turn to alcohol in addition to cigarettes, enabling his notorious paparazzi meltdown in late 1961.

Author's Note: This film is essentially where the Silver Age meets the Dark Age. Hopefully, the plot for this movie is acceptable to you guys since I found this one of the hardest to create. Beginning with the 1963 film, Walt Disney himself will no longer be involved with the production of any films released in this universe's Walt Disney Animated Canon.
 
Alice in Wonderland (1961)

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Walt Disney first read Lewis Carroll's Alice books as a child. In 1933, Disney considered making a full-length live-action/animation Alice film but canceled it in favor of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. In 1938, after Snow White’s success, he bought the rights to Alice in Wonderland and officially registered the title. David Hall finished a story reel by 1939, but Disney was displeased. He realized the extreme complexity of Alice so he scrapped the project. In 1957, with Atlantis deep into production, Disney looked for more works to adapt and chose to revive Alice in Wonderland. He was pleased with the story draft assigned to Bill Peet. With Atlantis disappointing critics and the box office, Disney was discussing shutting down the studio’s animation department. Meanwhile, Ub Iwerks experimented with a Xerox camera to aid in animation and modified one to directly transfer drawings to cels, saving both time and money. What it could not do was deviate from a black, scratchy outline nor recreate the lavishness of hand-inking. Ken Anderson proposed to use the Xerox for Alice to a disenchanted Walt. He approved but would grow to dislike the art style of Alice in Wonderland because he felt that the fantasy element of his previous works was lost.

Alice in Wonderland begins in Victorian England where a young girl named Alice finds a white rabbit yelling out loud that he is late. She follows him down a rabbit hole and freefalls into a corridor lined with doors. After messing with size-changing food and drinks, she creates an ocean out of her tears and uses it to escape through a mirror behind the smallest door. Once outside, she finds herself among talking plants, animals, and other strange creatures, some original and others from well-known nursery rhymes. While few are rational and mostly rude, she comes across the bizarre but well-meaning Mad Hatter and March Hare she comes across at the Mad Hatter’s grand Tea Party. They guide Alice to the Red Queen of Hearts' castle, the home of the infamous Wonderland tyrant who uses her Cheshire Cat to trick everyone, except the already insane Mad Hatter and March Hare, into deep madness so that they can't revolt against her reign. Unafraid of the Queen’s rule and the Cheshire Cat, and because only the Red Queen of Hearts knows how Alice can return home, Alice challenges the Queen to a croquet match and a life-sized game of Wonderland chess. If she loses both games, Alice will never be able to return home.

Alice in Wonderland premiered on July 26, 1961. Costing nearly $3.5 million, it doubled that at the box office. Despite positive reception among audiences at the time, critical reception was largely negative. Critics called Alice too episodic and the Xerox technique was panned for producing “low” animation quality. Worst of all, the world was thought of as overly sweet yet most of the characters seemed to lack any likeability or charm. When it was re-released in 1969, after Walt’s death, Alice in Wonderland saw its critical reception vastly improve. It also broke records when released on home video in the 1980s. But the damage was done and Walt Disney was crushed by the early critical pans of the film. It only validated Walt’s hatred of the movie, not only the animation but the characters, plot, pacing, and virtually everything else. It had been one of his favorite childhood stories and this was the result? He never forgave Ken Anderson for his suggestion and quit animation once and for all to focus on theme parks and television programming. Finally, Alice’s perceived failure led Walt to turn to alcohol in addition to cigarettes, enabling his notorious paparazzi meltdown in late 1961.

Author's Note: This film is essentially where the Silver Age meets the Dark Age. Hopefully, the plot for this movie is acceptable to you guys since I found this one of the hardest to create. Beginning with the 1963 film, Walt Disney himself will no longer be involved with the production of any films released in this universe's Walt Disney Animated Canon.
Focusing more on theme parks and TV? Not bad, but I will miss the old days of Walt.

Adding an addition to alcohol on top of cigarettes? Oh no...
Oh no.............................

I don't see this ending well.....
 
Focusing more on theme parks and TV? Not bad, but I will miss the old days of Walt.

Adding an addition to alcohol on top of cigarettes? Oh no...
I mean Alice in Wonderland was one of Walt’s babies and he was not happy with how it turned out. Now imagine if Alice came after Sleeping Beauty IOTL, he would not have liked that and would’ve dampened his opinion on the finished Alice film even further. Critics find the film even more convoluted than OTL’s version and Carroll purists hate this version a lot more as well. Combine all that and I could easily Disney just snapping and going off the deep end. This is more or less what happens here. Pretty fitting since Alice’s vindication into a classic IOTL was from hardcore drug users.
 
God, I thought Alice in Wonderland was tough to develop a plot for, but this looks like it will blow it out of the water in terms of plot (or plots) development. As for Pixar, the first film will be Toy Story with its OTL 1995 release. every Pixar film after that is shuffled.
 
More hints for 1963-1977 (except 1967):
1963 - Developed IOTL pre-Disney Rennaisance
1970 - Not based on a European fairy
1973 - Has a romance
1977a - Contains an official or unofficial Disney Princess
1977b - Contains an anti-hero
 
Don't worry everyone, I am not abandoning this TL. But, this is a for-fun TL so even though I have a rough idea for what I want 1963 to be like, I probably won't post it for a little while since I'm working on other things at the moment.
 
Don't worry everyone, I am not abandoning this TL. But, this is a for-fun TL so even though I have a rough idea for what I want 1963 to be like, I probably won't post it for a little while since I'm working on other things at the moment.
Post at your own pace man there‘s no rush
 
Post at your own pace man there‘s no rush
Thank you.

Also, I forgot to mention this, but on a separate note, there's a reason why I had the Red Queen of Hearts instead of just the Queen of Hearts. Aside from combining the Red Queen and the Queen of Hearts, there's a card game called the Black Lady or Black Lady Hearts hence in this version of Alice there's a Black Queen of Hearts (entitled Black Lady Hearts) even though she's technically the Queen of Spades. As far as Disneyland goes I've replaced the Mad Tea Party with a life-size game of human chess called Un-Birthday Party Un-Chess.
 
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Melody Time (1963)
Melody Time (1963)

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Once Make Mine Music was completed in 1942, a follow-up was soon conceptualized. These plans were abandoned in 1947, though, as Disney forbade the development of any more package features sans the in-progress Fantasia. The sole exception would be in 1963, following the financial failure of Atlantis: The Lost Empire four years earlier, as well as the critical thrashing of Alice in Wonderland in 1961. One idea considered was a compilation of abandoned Disney story ideas from the past, including Babes in Toyland, Chanticleer, Hansel and Gretel, Mickey and the Beanstalk, Gremlins, Wind In the Willows, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and others. The staff debated this back and forth until Walt Disney stepped down from animation to focus on television and theme parks in 1961. The idea that was approved after Disney’s departure was to use popular musical selections from recent years and set them to animated stories, complete with various celebrity guest hosts. Like Alice before it, Melody Time used the Xerox method of animation. Since this was the first Disney-free film, the animators were worried about the direction the film would take, but Wolfgang Reitherman had stepped up as both director and producer.

The film focuses on 1950s music with 10 pieces set to animation, each piece representing the most successful songs of each year of the decade. Up first was Goodnight, Irene for 1950. In it, the animated narrator sings about his sorrow and frustration towards his lover, and the climactic scene shows the unnamed narrator jumping into a river. Too Young by Nat King Cole was up next, representing 1951, and then 1952 was Blue Tango, which was set in Argentina with everything, from the dancers to the backgrounds, colored blue. The next segment was It’s April Again sung by Felicia Sanders, telling the change from winter to spring and despair into love. The fifth segment was set to Little Things Mean a Lot by Kitty Kallen with two teenagers falling in love and going on a first date. The song for 1955 was a mambo version of Cherry Pink (and Apple Blossom White) recorded by Perez Prado telling a story about a Cuban sugar plantation worker and his family. Elvis Presley occupied the spaces for 1956 and 1957 in the film with Heartbreak Hotel and All Shook Up. The story for the former song has the protagonist walk out of a hotel to discover the world around him destroyed due to universal heartbreak, while the latter shows a dream about love gone wrong. For 1958 is Nel blu, dipinto di blu, showing two birds migrating from the Italian Alps for the winter. The last segment was based on The Battle of New Orleans recorded by John Horton, depicting a rather comical account of what happened on the battlefield.

Melody Time premiered in Hollywood on December 12, 1963, before its nationwide debut one week later. It was commercially viable, thanks in no short part to its $2.7 million budget. The two main praises of the film were the artistry of Blue Tango and Nel blu, dipinto di blu. The segment of Goodnight, Irene was criticized for its climax showing an implicit suicide and became even more controversial in 1964 after Walt Disney’s untimely death and was removed from circulation following an investigation about his death, considered by many a suicide. It was added back to the film for its home video release in 1998. The Battle of New Orleans received mixed reviews, with praise for the animation but criticism for historical inaccuracy. The Elvis Presley segments were considered the most memorable of Melody Time, but everything else was seen as forgettable. Critics bashed the use of celebrity hosts for having more screen time than the animated segments did themselves, and even with that, it clocked in at just over 60 minutes. Most of its small fanbase today comprises older Disney fans and people interested in the 1950s period as a whole.

A/N: I was originally going to do the idea of abandoned filmed ideas from OTL or stories from films that haven't been produced yet ITTL but I decided a Walt-less Disney would probably go in this direction instead. After all, the Melody Time of OTL comprised of period music so this made sense in that context, and Elvis Presley would be a big cash cow in this universe. After discovering what Goodbye, Irene was about, I figured it may or may not have influenced Disney's untimely death here, especially considering the path Disney took after the critical failure of TTL's Alice in Wonderland. Speaking of critical failure, reviews aren't much better for Melody Time here, and is nowadays ITTL considered the most infamous example of a Disney cash-grab, which explains its small fanbase and it being one of the most hated films by Disney. Even fans don’t like the first segment due to the intense controversy surrounding it.
 
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