When you Wish Upon a Frog (Book II of the Jim Henson at Disney saga)

[Ogrebear]

Oh... animation update.

"Greg Weisman and Michael Reeves," - big names indeed.

"It would almost be quicker to discuss the classic ‘80s and ‘90s animated classics that you weren’t a part of!" - was Michael involved in the Excelsior series?

"Your new Lex became the epitome of a Machiavellian schemer and manipulative psychopath" - and all the better for us!

"...but for the last decade the buzz in the industry was that you got paid more and treated better there by management." - the Henson Effect.

Roger Rabbit’s Tales from Toon Town- ITTL me would have stopped watching cartoons by then since he'd have left uni and had to get up and work....

"...poking at Bird Brain’s Batman, of course,[snip] sure to self-skewer the X-Men and Spider-Man as well." - Crossover Universe ahoy!

"Y-Nauts," - I wonder what the lineup of the team was?

"...approve the creation of Earth-3825, which is D-U-C-K on touch-tone," - heh very clever.

"led to the inevitable questions concerning Howard the Duck and Duckworld," - Whoops! Time for a side-step...

"...relaunched The Inhumanoids" - Hooray, that was a decent, if silly cartoon!

"The early treatments [of the film] had the gargoyles of Notre Dame coming to life as friends of Quasi’s," - and there is a What If Gargoyles story!

"And thus, Gargoyles was born." - Gargoyles, Gargoyles!

"...basically given free rein to write whatever I want." - within certain guidelines of taste and Disney whimsy I bet.

"Seriously, a rich and powerful man who schemes as a central antagonist. Such a unique idea! So glad I’m the first person to come up with it." - good snark!

"spawning its own Marvel Earth-78663, or “S-T-O-N-E” to allow for limited comics crossovers while keeping the “Goyleverse” self-contained." - so there is " Gargoyle Earths? One in the Marvel Multiverse and one outside? Would that not be confusing for canon?

"We got a lot of crap from moral guardians on that, even though we gave it a hard T rating " - yeah, but cartoons are For Kids don't you know! Idiots.

Hellspawn, The Savage Dragon and Youngblood. - i know Image does not exist, but do these Epic characters cross over?

"The Howard the Duck series became a big hit" - I can see a Howard series working well for a series more aimed at Adults.

"Brian Henson’s Happytown PD adult puppet series," - good for you Brian!

"...by having a brief Duck Avenger crossover." - I am not sure I can conceive of a Howard and Duck Avenger cross over. ITTL me would probably watch it though.

ITTL me would definitely have watched Pirates of the Void though as Planescape and Spelljammer where on the gaming table then.

Spelljammer and MickeyQuest modules for Treasure Planet? Awesome.

"Makiko Futaki, head of Studio Ai." - getting some big contracts there! Congratz.

"and visited every D&D world in one form or another." - Wonder if they visited The Realm where the Dungeons & Dragons Cartoon kids where?

"that season 3 visit to a Totally Not Discworld at All, Really planet" - heh, that sounds fun.

"You no longer needed big, established teams, expensive materials, or contracts with Japanese studios if you had a few DIS stations and a MINIBOG." - Bedroom animation studios ahoy!

"Lisa at Fox spinning up Filmation for a return to the big time," - More Star Trek: Excelsior and Captain Klaag please!

"we talk with Kevin Lima and Brenda Chapman about the Princess Squad and Hero Squad series" - sounds like adventuring teams made up of male and female characters from across the Disney properties, sorta like the Lego games but much earlier!

"tempted to sell bombards (i.e. cannons) and powder to the medieval society of the turtle world," - surprised they didn't ask the Spelljammers to check the sex of the Turtle!

"It served as a parable on climate change and won an Emmy." - wonder if President Gore watched it?

Excellent fun update there @Geekhis Khan

 

[nick_crenshaw82]

The Howard the Duck series became a big hit along

Does this replace Duckman?

Considering that we are getting Image Comic cartoon properties

Technically they're Epic Comics not Image ITTL.

 

[Geekhis Khan]

Chapter 15, The Aggravating Art of Adaption (Cont’d)
Excerpt from Where Did I Go Right? (or: You’re No One in Hollywood Unless Someone Wants You Dead), by Bernie Brillstein (with Cheryl Henson)

But Cats was just one part of a three-picture deal with Amblin. Steve [Spielberg] was also anxious to do a film based on Casper the Friendly Ghost, which Marvel had grabbed as part of the Harvey buy. Richard Rich, who’d produced the live-action Richie Rich, also from the old Harvey, wanted to do an animated version, but Steve was enamored at the time by what the new CG effects could do and wanted a live-action version with CG ghosts[1].

So I facilitated a deal between Amblin and the Skeleton Crew, and they co-produced the film, with Steve grabbing Ron Howard to direct and Caroline Thompson of Tank Girl fame (or infamy) writing the screenplay based upon some rough ideas that Steve had.

First off, the controversial thing: yea, they changed Casper’s backstory, not that I knew until the complaints came in after the fact. I guess originally, Casper was born a ghost, to ghost parents, which I guess makes some logical sense when you’re 7 [2]. In reality I think it was Mr. Harvey’s [SIC] way of dodging the whole dead-kid angle. But in this telling Casper Kumpelgeist, which I guess was the first time that he had a last name, was a kid who died “a hundred years ago” (Casper’s word, so to be taken with a grain of salt) of an unexplained “illness” (fans being fans, they still argue on the internet about what the illness was, with the 1918 Spanish Flu being the odds-on favorite).

There was also an early disagreement over Casper’s age. Steve originally wanted Casper to be 12, and was pushing a coming-of-age story. But Caroline pushed back, really wanting to keep Casper a purely innocent child of roughly 5-7. Instead, she developed a story where the human girl, Tabitha, would be 12 and have recently lost her older sister Samantha. Thus, her relationship with Casper becomes one of healing for her where she tries to be there for Casper the way her older sister was always there for her.

This ultimately framed the story. Tabitha and her dad (her mother died in childbirth) would move to the abandoned and supposedly haunted Castle Rock Manor in Friendship, Maine, which her father (a contractor) is hoping to restore it as part of his post-traumatic recovery. Of course the house really is haunted, not only by Casper, but by the Ghostly Trio, who harass and scare our protagonists. Dad hires every ghost buster he can find, including the famous Danny Ackroyd cameo, to no avail. But needless to say, Tabitha encounters and ultimately befriends Casper, whom she sort-of adopts as a little brother, and thus begins the healing process, coming to terms not only with her own loss, but restoring her connection with her distant father, who has never recovered from the loss of Tabitha’s mother.

It becomes a story of recovery, with even the Ghostly Trio forced to come to terms with their afterlife and the anger they carried beyond the grave. Caroline rejected any ideas of adding an evil developer or other external antagonist, instead favoring a more emotional comedy-drama.

Fatso, Lazo, and Fusso (Image source Gizmodo Australia)

And, well, the star of the film is Casper, voiced by Jude Barsi and portrayed in an old-timey photo by a child actor named Jake Lloyd. His friendship with Tabatha, played by Christina Ricci, is the real heart of the film, even as her estranged relationship with her father (Tim Allen) plays in the background. It was pretty steeped in symbolism and heavy emotion for a G-rated film, but Jim loved it, and backed Caroline on her refusal to add an external threat. The biggest “external” threat was, of course, the Ghostly Trio, voiced by John Candy (the leader Fatso), David Hyde Pierce (the persnickety Fusso), and Frank Welker (the dumb and lazy Lazo), who symbolize the figurative “ghosts” of Tabitha and her father’s collective trauma.

But of course, the slapstick comedy and CG effects became the real stars, making Casper the first all-digital protagonist and making even a jaded old New York to Hollywood man like me believe in ghosts. Tim’s Skeleton Crew provided the art direction and design, giving Castle Rock Manor that look that we now call “Burtonesque”. We filled it with cameos and sly references to Stephen King and Beetlejuice and even had the Crypt Keeper show up. The way that Ron managed to balance the silly slapstick and fourth-wall leans with the deep and emotional scenes was just, well, auteur hardly covers it. Magnificent!

(Image source Pinterest)

Well, Casper made a solid $340 million[3] when it debuted in May of 1995, a huge win over its $55 million budget. Critics and audiences adored it and still adore it. It’s become a classic kid’s film, a “triumph in G-rated entertainment” according to Family Circle. It spawned a forgettable sequel in 1998 and a straight-to-Video prequel in 2001.

For the third film, we’d discussed Jumanji, but instead Steve made a side deal there with Columbia, since Ted Turner was apparently really trying to reestablish a Columbia-Amblin relationship. Columbia had been in early production on Annie, so we made a deal to take over production and share US distribution of Annie and let them have Jumanji. Such is the horse trading of Hollywood, or Y'Allywood, for that matter. Steve said that he liked working with Dawn Steel, but that after she was forced out in favor of Eisner, the whole thing left a bad taste in his mouth. Steve and Frank Coppola went into active production on the Annie film, which Frank hoped would be good preparation for the upcoming The Road to Ruin.

A lot like this, but earlier

I was sweating buckets on this one. If it flopped, then I’d be the one forced to tell Jim that he couldn’t have his Big Musical because the board would demand that we kill The Road to Ruin (it was on thin ice already). I had to keep costs down, but I was dealing with Coppola, the consummate perfectionist, who’d film five times as many feet of film as any other director in his quest to get it “right”. I had to keep a leash on him, but at the same time I knew the “tricks of the trade” on “getting a film pregnant” and the like, so giving him a meager budget would backfire. So I was square with him. This had to work.

1982’s Annie cost a whopping for the time $35 million. Lots of location shoots in NYC and Jersey, building an entire outdoor set and then re-filming everything…it added up. We had to keep costs below $40 million at the most, ideally less if he’d have any chance of making a reasonable profit. I basically told Frank that if Annie failed, there would be no Road to Ruin, with this big, exciting, risky picture both the carrot and stick for him to keep things in check. This meant no 70mm super extravaganzas, no massive bank-breaking Busby Berkeley numbers, no hundreds of extras, no special effects beyond that needed to tell the story, and no Jack Nicholson or other top-dollar actors.

We avoided Big Name Stars for the lead roles and mostly stuck with reliable middle-tier actors like Robert Duvall as a brilliant Daddy Warbucks. Kathy Bates was brought in as the antagonist Agatha Hannigan, and agreed to work for a relatively low fee for the chance to work with Coppola. James Caan became the criminal “Rooster” Hannigan and Madonna, who had worked with us on A League of Their Own and was trying to restart a film career after Dick Tracy, came in as Lily St. Regis. Finally, after long consideration, we found Bollywood actor Salman Khan for the role of Punjab after Frank insisted on an actual Indian actor for the role. We brought in choreographer Alan Johnson to do the dance numbers.

And for the titular role, we found an up-and-coming young actress named Scarlett Johansson who could act, sing, and dance exceptionally well for one so young. She’d previously worked with Steve on Jumanji and he was eager to work with her again. She had a great screen presence and completely took over the role. But you knew that.

We also brought in Samantha Smith as Oliver Warbucks' personal secretary Grace Farrell. In a bit of meta-resonance, as a former child actor herself, Sam took Scarlett under her wing, giving her advice on how to deal with the stresses of child acting and how to spot the types of assholes that will try to take advantage of your innocence. We also made the orphans more ethnically diverse with Black, Puerto Rican, Asian, and other non-whites and really made it look like modern New York City, even if the principal cast remained all white. Scarlett's twin brother Hunter even played one of the fellow orphans, as the two apparently had some personal history that they could totally relate to the roles.

But the biggest money savings came from one of the more controversial decisions: setting the film in the present day. This drastically reduced costs by not requiring special sets and props and vehicles. We could film on location without having to replace all the modern awnings and modern cars. It also meant that we needed to drop the orphanage angle, which was a major setting for the original story, since orphanages aren’t really a thing anymore. Instead, Agatha becomes a serial foster system abuser currently using a variety of aliases to simultaneously foster a dozen boys and girls in order to collect the stipend and use the children for free labor. Her brother Rooster is her partner in crime and helping to maintain the fraud with the foster Agency. We had to play things very carefully to make it clear that Agatha is not a typical foster mother, but a con artist playing the system. Even so, foster parents from all over the world gave us grief.

Critics gave the film good reviews, but not great ones. Scarlett was singled out for her brilliance as was Bates, and Duvall and Caan got great marks, reliable as always, but complaints about the present-day setting change and the typical questions of what we had that the 1982 film didn’t already offer were a natural, so we tended to be a “it’s good, but it’s not great” with Two Thumbs Up, but not really enthusiastically so. Time was on our side, but that didn’t help at the moment.

With a few sets and a few limited location shoots, Frank managed to keep the budget at just over $36.2 million at the end, which was good, because while the film has gone on to become a classic on home media, it only scored just over $67.8 million at the box office, an “underperformance”, though not a bad one. Home media and TV syndication did well and continue to do alright. This put us right on the cusp of success: we were quickly profitable once VHS and VCD sales went out, but we weren’t a smash or a flop.

And it was this “borderline” performance that was the biggest challenge of all for us. Not well enough to assuage fears about The Road to Ruin, but not bad enough to make killing the film inevitable. Any hopes that Annie would serve as a clear bellwether for going forward evaporated.

Even so, the risks looked bad. Assuming an equivalent box office performance to Annie, The Road to Ruin looked like it was at best looking at a break-even scenario box office wise, which meant a net loss for MGM.

The inherent irony of the film’s name lingered on as I, with increasing reluctance, gave Frank the green light on The Road to Ruin.

---

[1] Why does Casper show up “on schedule” per our timeline? Because that’s when the effects make Spielberg’s long-held vision for it possible. Hat tips to WanderingProfessor and @nick_crenshaw82 for the assist on Casper and Annie.

[2] Somewhat inaccurate statement here. Early Casper appearances were somewhat ambiguous from what I have read, with one scene where Casper is by a headstone with his name on it. The “ghost parents” angle came in the 1960s.

[3] Notably better than our timeline thanks to Howard’s sincere and heartfelt direction and a plot that dodges clichés and delivers something heartwarming but not saccharine.

 

[Bbone91]

I hope Jake Lloyd can get a better deal in this timeline than he got in ours.

 

[MNM041]

I hope Jake Lloyd can get a better deal in this timeline than he got in ours.

Trust me, we all want to see that.

 

[Plateosaurus]

Looks great!

Finally, after long consideration, we found Bollywood actor Salman Khan for the role of Punjab after Frank insisted on an actual Indian actor for the role. We brought in choreographer Alan Johnson to do the dance numbers.

Wonder if this butterflies his 1998 killing of an endagered species?

Salman Khan - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[theg*ddam*hoi2fan]

Great stuff! And fingers crossed that Jake Lloyd has better times ahead than OTL.

 

[Deleted member 165942]

Really just have him avoid getting attached to something like OTL Star Wars Prequels and he'll have a better life because it wasn't his fault that 1) The Prequels were kinda bad and 2) his lines were also kinda bad.

 

[Shiny_Agumon]

But in this telling Casper Kumpelgeist, which I guess was the first time that he had a last name, was a kid who died “a hundred years ago”

Hah his name literally means Buddy Ghost, very funny.

There was also an early disagreement over Casper’s age. Steve originally wanted Casper to be 12, and was pushing a coming-of-age story. But Caroline pushed back, really wanting to keep Casper a purely innocent child of roughly 5-7. Instead, she developed a story where the human girl, Tabitha, would be 12 and have recently lost her older sister Samantha. Thus, her relationship with Casper becomes one of healing for her where she tries to be there for Casper the way her older sister was always there for her.

So no awkward romance subplot, thank godess, that was always the weirdest part of the OTL film for me (and given the general plot if this film that's saying something).

Casper is no Teenage heartthrob thank you very much!

Dad hires every ghost buster he can find, including the famous Danny Ackroyd cameo, to no avail.

Does he shave his moustache for this?

It becomes a story of recovery, with even the Ghostly Trio forced to come to terms with their afterlife and the anger they carried beyond the grave. Caroline rejected any ideas of adding an evil developer or other external antagonist, instead favoring a more emotional comedy-drama.

So no Evil Robbers, no Casper's dad investing a death reversal machine, no "unfinished business?" and no Dad dying here?

Certainly makes this film a bit more box standard, but I think it's generally an improvement. Also what's the Backstory for the Ghostly Trio? I always imagined them as incompetent mobsters who got themselves killed through their own stupidity.

And, well, the star of the film is Casper, voiced by Jude Barsi and portrayed in an old-timey photo by a child actor named Jake Lloyd.

A more standard voice acting role for Jude then her last outings.

Also I hope that Jake Lloyd has it easier in this Timeline, poking a bit of fun at questionable child acting is one thing but bullying a child is just horrible.

Salman Khan for the role of Punjab after Frank insisted on an actual Indian actor for the role.

Isn't he a massive star in India?

Funny how one man's superstar is another man's unknown actor.

We also brought in Samantha Smith as Oliver Warbucks' personal secretary Grace Farrell. In a bit of meta-resonance, as a former child actor herself, Sam took Scarlett under her wing, giving her advice on how to deal with the stresses of child acting and how to spot the types of assholes that will try to take advantage of your innocence.

I'm glad that Samantha Smith is not only doing great outside of Star Trek, but that she's also paying it forward by taking another child actor under her wings.

Even so, the risks looked bad. Assuming an equivalent box office performance to Annie, The Road to Ruin looked like it was at best looking at a break-even scenario box office wise, which meant a net loss for MGM.

The inherent irony of the film’s name lingered on as I, with increasing reluctance, gave Frank the green light on The Road to Ruin.

Road to Ruin is either going to be a massive hit or is going to cost Bernie his job isn't it?
I hope it can live up to these expectations.

Great chapter @Geekhis Khan

 

[Plateosaurus]

@Geekhis Khan Can I point out Casper should be owned by Columbia at this point?

 

[Geekhis Khan]

@Geekhis Khan Can I point out Casper should be owned by Columbia at this point?

I can see no reason why Casper should be owned by Columbia at this point in TTL or in OTL. Perhaps you're confusing this with another ATL?

The Casper IP has been owned by Harvey Comics since 1962. I believe this includes the rights to the old Casper Fleisher/Famous cartoons, though this may still be with Fleisher, which would be with Paramount and therefore Triad. But the IP will be Harvey, which was bought by Marvel in the '80s iTTL which was in turn bought by Disney in '87 iTTL. So IP and Distribution Rights for any new production should be with Disney. Perhaps there's a Triad claim (maybe? It's unclear) but nothing with Columbia.

Or perhaps you're confusing this with the 1987 lawsuit where Harvey sued Columbia because they claimed that the Ghostbusters Logo was too similar to Fatso, but that got quickly thrown out by a judge because, duh, Generic Ghost. ITTL Ghostbusters was distributed under Fantasia, so that's not even a thing.

Unless there's some weird distribution issue I'm missing I see absolutely nothing to link Columbia to Casper.

 

[Denliner]

Also I hope that Jake Lloyd has it easier in this Timeline, poking a bit of fun at questionable child acting is one thing but bullying a child is just horrible.

He'll probably go off unscathed ITTL compared to OTL since his performance in Casper is decent enough and the franchise isn't as big as Star Wars so there are fewer irrational fans to tear him apart, if any. I'm interested to see how his career will continue in the TL since he isn't going to be forced out of acting anymore and he has people like Samantha Smith as a mentor.

 

[Kalvan]

I despised the 2014 Annie remake. No, it isn't because I'm a racist. Quvenzhane Wallis as the only good thing about it, but she simply couldn't carry it all by her lonesome. They didn't put enough thought about the implications of changing the setting to the present day, the villains' motives made no sense within the scope of the plot, and they turned Daddy Warbucks into Kwame Kirkpatrick, turning the point of the character on its head!

 

[Arrowfan237]

I despised the 2014 Annie remake. No, it isn't because I'm a racist. Quvenzhane Wallis as the only good thing about it, but she simply couldn't carry it all by her lonesome. They didn't put enough thought about the implications of changing the setting to the present day, the villains' motives made no sense within the scope of the plot, and they turned Daddy Warbucks into Kwame Kirkpatrick, turning the point of the character on its head!

Unrelated but this just reminds me of my favorite line from the movie musical Reefer Madness (2005), a parody of the infamous 1930’s film of the same name.
——————————————————————
FDR: “you know a little orphan girl once told me that the “sun would come out tomorrow.” Her adopted father was a powerful billionaire so I suppressed the urge to laugh in her face.”

 

[Emote Control]

Will Exo-Squad make an appearance ITTL?

 

[Plateosaurus]

Will Exo-Squad make an appearance ITTL?

it has got a mention.

Instead, UPA continued to make animation for Universal on television. The series Monster Force and ExoSquad[6]

 

[Shiny_Agumon]

He'll probably go off unscathed ITTL compared to OTL since his performance in Casper is decent enough

How you can see here:

And, well, the star of the film is Casper, voiced by Jude Barsi and portrayed in an old-timey photo by a child actor named Jake Lloyd.

He didn't perform at all, just appearing as a stand in on an old photograph wearing a sailor suit or something.

Regardless I'm not convinced that the Star Wars Prequels are entirely off the table. George might have been too busy in this Timeline to change the existing OT (yet), but I'm certain that he was always planning on showing the Rise of the Galactic Empire and Anakin's Fall eventually.

Idk if they will turn out better or worse ITTL, but I'm that we haven't seen the last of Star Wars in theaters.

 

[Denliner]

He didn't perform at all, just appearing as a stand in on an old photograph wearing a sailor suit or something.

Then we don't have anything to worry about when it comes to Jake Floyd, for now.

Regardless I'm not convinced that the Star Wars Prequels are entirely off the table. George might have been too busy in this Timeline to change the existing OT (yet), but I'm certain that he was always planning on showing the Rise of the Galactic Empire and Anakin's Fall eventually.

It could end up being wildly different from OTL though. Heck, maybe Anniken is aged up into a teenager by the time the Prequels get made since it's been discussed a couple of times in the thread.

 

[Deleted member 165942]

Then we don't have anything to worry about when it comes to Jake Floyd, for now.

Let's just hope that if he does get a major role, it would turn out better for him and not have him bullied so much that he freaking developed paranoid schizophrenia later in life.

 

[Denliner]

Let's just hope that if he does get a major role, it would turn out better for him and not have him bullied so much that he freaking developed paranoid schizophrenia later in life.

He's already on the right track by having a career that's farther away from mainstream franchises like Star Wars. I think he would be an okay TV actor, though I wouldn't mind him if he goes into the movie business later on (Star Wars is a possibility...).