3. The Lion King
Being perhaps the most well known of the Disney animated classics everyone knows that The Lion King was inspired by William Shakespeares Hamlet but the journey to everyones favorite films about little lions coming of age wasnt quite as simple as that. The original treatment for the film (worryingly written by Brave Little Toaster scribe Thomas Disch) featured a battle between lions and baboons, starring a Scar as the leader of the baboons and one Rafiki as a helpful cheetah. After years of production, original pitcher Jeffry Katzenberg and his team including Thomas Schumacher, director of The Rescuers Down Under had hammered the film into quite a different shape drawing further inspirations from biblical stories of Moses and Joseph.