The Disney+ oddity that once shook Disney: Why The Black Cauldron still stands apart
Disney’s first PG animated feature was cut, delayed and costly in 1985. Now The Black Cauldron lives on as a Disney+ cult favorite.
One of the strangest titles in Disney’s animated history is also one of its most important. The Black Cauldron arrived in 1985 as the studio’s first PG-rated cartoon, and its long road to theaters helps explain why it flopped, and why fans still seek it out on Disney+ now.
A darker Disney milestone is easier to revisit now
The Black Cauldron is streaming on Disney+, giving modern Disney fans an easy way to revisit a movie that once looked like a major gamble for the studio. Released on July 24, 1985, it was Disney’s first animated feature to receive a PG rating.
That rating fit the material. The story follows Taran, a pig keeper whose pig, Hen Wen, can see the future. When the Horned King takes Hen Wen in hopes of finding the Black Cauldron, Taran goes after her and joins up with Princess Eilonwy, the minstrel Fflewddur Fflam and Gurgi. The threat at the center of the film is unusually bleak for Disney animation. The cauldron can create an army of deathless warriors, and the Horned King wants that power.
The voice cast included John Hurt as the Horned King, Grant Bardsley as Taran, Susan Sheridan as Eilonwy, John Byner as Gurgi, Nigel Hawthorne as Fflewddur Fflam and John Huston as the prologue narrator.
Why the movie changed before audiences ever saw it
The Black Cauldron had an unusually difficult path to release. Disney had bought the screen rights to Lloyd Alexander’s five-book Chronicles of Prydain series in 1971, but combining that material into one film proved difficult because the books contain many major characters and storylines.
The project spent 12 years in development, including five years of actual production. Producer Joe Hale took over in 1980 and reshaped the story, most notably by turning the Horned King from a relatively minor figure in the books into the movie’s central villain.
The production also lost key animation staff when Don Bluth left Disney with a group of animators and employees in 1979. The film changed again after new leadership arrived in 1984. Jeffrey Katzenberg ordered a recut of the nearly finished movie, shortening a graphic sequence involving one of the cauldron’s undead warriors and removing other material he considered too grim. Its planned Christmas 1984 release shifted to summer 1985.
Who it affects now: Disney fans curious about a famous misfire
For Disney fans, the movie remains notable both for its ambition and for its commercial result. It cost about $25 million after originally being planned at $15 million, and it brought in about $21 million domestically. It has been described as a box office failure, and one later trade account said it was Disney’s only animated feature not to turn a profit.
Even so, the film carried technical significance. It was Disney’s first animated feature shot in 70mm since Sleeping Beauty, included three scenes of computer animation and introduced the Animation Photo Transfer process for moving drawings onto cels. The production used more than 1,165 colors and over 34 miles of film stock.
Its reputation has shifted with time. Some critics in 1985 thought it might overwhelm very young children, while others argued Disney animation had always contained darker undercurrents. Today, The Black Cauldron is widely regarded as a cult favorite, and Disney+ has made the studio’s once-troubled fantasy easier to discover.
