10 Famous Movies Test Audiences Improved With Their Criticism

1. The Little Mermaid

It€™s not surprising that Disney would test screen its animated films with audiences made up of almost entirely of children. However, it€™s because of such a screening that The Little Mermaid nearly lost its most popular song - the one that comprises many of the main musical cues in the film. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GK4HNNhQ0e4 Jeffrey Katzenberg, who was at the time the chairperson of Walt Disney Studios, thought that the song Part Of Your World was too slow for a children€™s film. Katzenberg attended a test screening of an unfinished version of The Little Mermaid with a large audience of children. He felt that the screening confirmed his view when he noticed that most of the children seemed restless and bored during the sequence, which wasn€™t fully animated. Obviously the members of The Little Mermaid's production team thought Katzenberg was wrong and decided to retest the movie in front of a largely adult audience with the completed footage. The adult audience raved about the show-stopping song and Katzenberg relented. It has since become one of the most enduring and popular songs from a Disney animated movie even though it nearly ended up on the cutting room floor. To his credit, Katzenberg has since admitted he was about as wrong as humanly possible. Do you think the filmmakers and studios make the right decisions on these movies when they listened to the test audiences? Tell us your thoughts in the comments!