4:24 The gun change was, sadly, made for an incredibly tragic reason. Judith Barsi, the little girl who voiced Anne Marie in the film, was murdered along with her mother near the end of production. The weapon in the film was changed to a cartoony ray gun instead of a real one, to draw fewer parallels to her actress’s murder.

Surprise you didn’t mention he was going to do an animated Dracula movie

I was lucky enough to talk with Don Bluth at Denver Comic Con on July 2024( Denver Fan Expo). At the time, Dirk Daring was going to be Chris Pratt but I could easily see Ryan Reynolds take on the role! He shared with me the Netflix deal would  have very little animation in the movie.😮 Apparently Netflix didn't want any animation, but Don insisted that fans are going to be very angry if there isn't even a little bit of it somewhere!😂

FOUND: Recently in an AMA, Stu Krieger revealed he had actually discovered an early workprint of The Land Before Time, possibly one of the earliest cuts since some scenes are incomplete.

And yes, all the uncut sharptooth content is intact in this version, including the extended chase scene and the “Reaction shot” of Littlefoot’s mother being bit.

It has not yet been released, but we now have an actually confirmed workprint, which weirdly enough (according to stu) is actually shorter than the theatrical version, but if I had to guess that’s only because it wouldn’t have the credits or the rooter sequence added in reshoots.

So yes, a piece of Don Bluth lost media had officially been found!

The Don Bluth version of The Velveteen Rabbit not being made is the one that bums me out the most. It's just the perfect idea for a Don Bluth movie.

If Don Bluth didn’t think about releasing All Dogs Go to Heaven the same day as The Little Mermaid, the film would gross at least up to $55 million and recoup all the expenses.

I would love the beauty and the beast version of don bluth 😢😔

Now that I think about it, if Don Bluth's Beauty and the Beast got made, we would have had basically the same competition Disney and Guillermo del Toro had in 2022, when they both made a Pinocchio adaptation.

47:06  I thought everyone knew about "The Music Box" . . . What you have there is concept art for an early version of Anastasia in which there were more animal sidekicks. The working title of Anastasia was "The Music Box." I believe the animals were to speak at some point. No voices were ever recorded. The concept was changed very early on.

The rat is or became the ferret that was Anya's sidekick until they were replaced with the puppy named Pooka.

You forgot the Ming-na Wen version of Titan A.E. The studio forced Bluth to replace her recording with Drew Barrymore.

Don Bluth is one of my favourite animation filmmakers ever. Some of his films like Secret of Nimh and The Land Before Time are some of my favourite films of all time. He’s arguably one of the first ever people to have challenged Disney and you could even argue that he was one of the reasons that Disney stepped up their game in terms of their animated films and gave us The Disney Renaissance. I would have loved to of seen what his version of Bram Stokers Dracula would have been like, with the concept art I like to think it would have been accurate to the original book but still having it’s own original elements, and I have heard that the plots and concepts of both East of The Sun and West of The Moon and Satyrday would later be refurbished into the 2014 animated French film Mune (which is a very underrated film) so they did sort of still live on in a way. I also would have like to have known what Don Bluth’s version of A Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, being a fan of both the original radio play and the book, it probably would’ve been the most bizarre yet entertaining film from Don Bluth.

I never thought that Don Bluth had many unproduced animated film projects he's been working on but never saw the light of day because of budgetary constraints for his animated films.
He went bankrupt three times between 1983 and 1984.

Who knew Don Bluth could be involved in so many projects at once!

Bluth eventually put out a whale story in the form of a children's book called Yuki Star of the Sea.

If the Ryan Reynolds Dragon's Lair movie at Netflix ends up happenning, I for one wish we see an animated sequence in the Don Bluth style. Perhaps the sequence could be used as a narrative plot device to either a backstory introduction at the beginning - narrated thru voiceover - or late in the 1st act to explain who Mordrok is &/or the film's mcguffin (the only object powerful enough to slay Singe the Dragon, the Magic Sword, perhaps?).

I heard another planned Don Bluth film was a Rapunzel adaptation. Apparently, it would have involved a talking cricket.

That Land Before Time dark ending is even more darker once after you read about what happened to Ducky's original actress, Judith Barsi🥺

I loved Pebble and the Penguin as a kid despite it's animation problems. Heck I didn't even notice them till somebody pointed them out. 💀

22:33 I wouldn’t be surprised if this Land Before Time ending is fake, because it sounds like one of those creepypasta fan theories about kid's shows where all the characters are actually dead

That concept pitch for the "Dragon's Lair" movie looks amazing. Even though that's not the version we're getting, it still just feels comforting seeing a bit of new 2D Don Bluth content made in the 2010s. He's definitely one of the greats.