The Emperor’s New Groove Didn’t Have an [INSERT NOUN HERE] By the Time It Was in Theatres

Because you’re reading Gizmodo, you understand that by the time a movie makes its way to theatres or to a streaming platform, the project has gone through countless revisions at almost every step of the production process, from initial conceptualisation to reshoots to the day the finished product is available to audiences.

Movies don’t just happen — they’re gargantuan efforts that require massive amounts of organisation and coordination to get off the ground, especially when it comes to big-budget animated features produced by major Hollywood studios. While there’s no question that an incalculable amount of time and energy went into the creation of Disney’s The Emperor’s New Groove, Vulture’s new oral history of the movie describes how, unbeknownst to the public, the creative team was able to deliver a finalised movie that went out for theatrical distribution…despite the fact that there was never a finalised working script attached to the film.

[referenced id=”1219149″ url=”https://gizmodo.com.au/2020/05/who-framed-roger-rabbit-an-oral-history/” thumb=”https://gizmodo.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/29/lthgg5qwo3zrcejxjyvg-300×169.png” title=”Who Framed Roger Rabbit: An Oral History” excerpt=”technology and technique, and 32 years later it’s every bit as fresh, warm, and funny as it ever was. Starring Bob Hoskins as gumshoe PI Eddie Valiant on the trail of a sex scandal involving a Hollywood studio bigwig, Who Framed Roger Rabbit expertly peels back the layers of conspiracy…”]

In Vulture’s piece, The Emperor’s New Groove screenwriter David Reynolds describes how, after being given the heads-up by a friend working for the studio that archives would eventually come asking for the movie’s final script for recordkeeping purposes, Reynolds had no real script to offer. Though The Emperor’s New Groove was already in theatres, the scenes in the movie were comprised of various moments from unbound pages that were…around, in the sense that they existed.

“They had a couple interns just take all the pages and put them into a document, and then they wrote interstitials, and they slapped my name on it,” Reynolds said. “This is the honest-to-God truth: The first and only draft of The Emperor’s New Groove was handed in two weeks after the movie was in theatres.”

The implication here is that while The Emperor’s New Groove’s production team was able to crank out a movie, the process apparently wasn’t as streamlined and meticulous as one would imagine Disney productions to be. It’s likely that things like this happen more often than studios are inclined to let on, so as to not appear as if they’re just making things up as they go along. But it’s good to hear someone close to the project own up to how wild the creative process actually was.

The Emperor’s New Groove is now streaming on Disney+.