Don Bluth's unrealized projects

Piper

• An animated short film based on the famous Pied Piper of Hamelin story was in the works in the early 1970s. Not much is known about this short but bits and pieces can be found online.^[1]

East of the Sun and West of the Moon

• In the early 1980s, Bluth Productions began work on an animated feature film entitled East of the Sun and West of the Moon.^[2] Ultimately, the film was never made due to a loss of financial backing,^[3] even though the film was heavily into production at the time of its cancellation. They decided to make An American Tail as its 2nd animated film, starting production in December 1984 and released in November 1986.

The Velveteen Rabbit

• One of the animated films that Don Bluth was going to work with Steven Spielberg on, where it is an animation adaptation of the story The Velveteen Rabbit, which is about a toy rabbit trying to become a real rabbit after his beloved human child owner is forced to abandon him.^[4]

Laserdisc arcade games

Plans for other arcade games similar to Dragon's Lair and Space Ace such as:

• The Sea Beast, where a 1940s sailor named Barnacle Bill tries to rescue a mermaid princess from a nasty sea beast.
• Jason and the Golden Fleece, based on the famous Greek legend Jason.
• Devil's Island, where you play a shipwreck passenger trying to find treasure, rescue a jungle princess and take down a corrupt civilization.
• Haywire, where you play a Charlie Chaplin like character trying to survive and escape a huge factory run by an evil business man.
• Drac, where Van Helsing has to save his girlfriend from Dracula and his monster minions of evil before she becomes one of his brides.
• Cro Magnon, where you play a Cro Magnon caveman as he battles vicious dinosaurs, scary creatures and an evil warlord.
• Sorceress, where you control a sorceress to protect her island from temple robbers and poachers.

Due to the 1983 video game crash, leading to the bankruptcy of both Bluth and Cinematronics, these ideas were scrapped, with the only laserdisc game released by Bluth was Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp in 1991.^[5]

Star Baby

• An animated film that Don Bluth was going to work with Steven Spielberg. No info on this unmade film has been found yet, but was hinted to be an outer space adventure like movie.^[6]

Strawberry Fields Forever

• After acquiring the rights to The Beatles' songs in the mid-1980's, Michael Jackson approached Bluth with a movie idea called Strawberry Fields Forever. It would consist of animated Fantasia-style vignettes featuring Beatles songs, similar to Yellow Submarine. Not only did Don Bluth agree to it, he also planned on making it entirely in CGI. Had the movie been made, it would have predated the ground-breaking Toy Story by about eight years. Further along in the project, the premise became revamped so that characters from Beatles songs (like Mr. Mustard and the Walrus) would act as New York City gangsters. Among other reasons, the main reason why the project fell through was because the surviving Beatles members denied permission to use their images in an animated film. The only part of the film that managed to be made was test footage of the "Beatles gangsters."^[7]

Satyrday

• An animated film that Don Bluth was going to make with Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. Based on the story by Steven Bauer where a young boy in a fantasy world goes on a quest to get the moon back and save the sun from evil forces. Some of the film's concepts latter went into the French animated film Mune: Guardian of the Moon.^[8]

The Little Blue Whale

• An animated film about a little girl and her animal friends try to protect a little whale from evil whalers. But was canceled by its co-production studio Carolco Pictures after the commercial and critically failure of its first animated film Pound Puppies and the Legend of Big Paw.^[9]

Beauty and the Beast

• An animated feature film adaptation of the classic fairy tale directed by Don Bluth. While some concept arts were made in 1984, the film's production was canceled when Don Bluth and the film's distributor Columbia heard the news of Disney making an animated film with the same name.^[10]

Kandu: Song of the Ice Whale

• An animated feature film that involves whales but more of a discovery experience through a whale's eye with a beautiful score and narration. While storyboards, where made in 1991, the film's production, was canceled due to problems with studios and Don Bluth was working on other productions in the 1990s.^[11]

Jawbreaker

• A TV mini-series of a boy finds a magical tooth, while a video showed a clip of what the show is.^[12] The mini-series' production was shut down when Don Bluth started Fox Animation Studios.

The Magic Pencils

• A canceled animated short film that was centered around a magical talking pencils starring Dom DeLuise, until Don Bluth started Fox Animation Studios.^[13]

Ice Age

• The film was planned to be a comedy-less drama similar to The Land Before Time, but due to the closure of Fox Animation Studios and the box office disaster of Titan A.E. the film was lent over to Blue Sky Studios who turned it into a dramedy.^[14]

Pac-Man Adventures

• Originally planned to have worked on in partnership with Namco around 2003. The project was scrapped due to financial problems on Namco's part leading to their merger with Bandai in 2007 and whatever development assets were left over was made into Pac Man World 3 with no involvement from Bluth.^[15][16]

Dragon's Lair film

• In the 1980s a film version of Dragon's Lair was planned, with Alan Dean Foster involved in shaping the story. The project fell apart due to low interest from other studios.^[17] On October 26, 2015, Bluth and Goldman started a Kickstarter campaign to create a teaser for an animated feature-length Dragon's Lair prequel film, their first feature film since Titan A.E..^[18] The Kickstarter funding was canceled when not enough funds were made close to the deadline, but an Indiegogo page for the project was created in its place.^[19] On December 14, 2015, the Indiegogo campaign reached its goal of $250,000 to produce a teaser, 14 days after the campaign launched, and got more than twice the budget on January 16, 2016.^[19][20] Bluth and Goldman have announced that the film will provide more backstory for Dirk and Daphne and that Daphne will show that she is not a "blonde airhead".^[21] Since then, there have been no further production news.