3. Toy Story (1995)
Horrible Idea At The Time Because... Nobody Had Faith In Fully Computer Generated Movies When
Toy Story director John Lasseter approached Disney (for whom he was working at the time) with the idea to make a fully CGI-rendered movie, he was fired. That's not a joke. When he went to them with the concept, they sacked him, presumably because they thought he had gone insane. That's when he joined Pixar, of course, where his "crazy schemes" were taken a little more seriously. Walt Disney was thought to be nuts when he decided to try and make
Snow White into a feature length animation, by the way, so it's a common thread. But even when
Toy Story started to gain momentum as a motion picture, nobody was really sure about whether or not they were doing the right thing putting money into it. There was no way to test the water with audiences, either, because there wasn't a similar movie in existence, and a turbulent production process meant it was impossible to weigh success. When Pixar first showed parts of
Toy Story to test audiences, reception was lukewarm, which might've led to the production shutting down had Pixar not been brave enough to keep going. Even the bulk of animators thought it would be a flop, and not the slice of innovative genius it later emerged as.