10 Movies That Changed Drastically Midway Through Production

Despite it being a breezy, light-hearted family film, the production of The Emperor's New Groove was the exact opposite. It was a full-blown disaster, and came dangerously close to being cancelled on multiple occasions, before being completely overhauled into the movie we see today.

The flick was originally going to be called Kingdom of the Sun, and was headed up by two directors: Mark Dindal, who had previously worked on The Little Mermaid and Aladdin; and Roger Allers, fresh off helming The Lion King. The two men had impressive résumés, but unfortunately, their individual styles did not mix together well on this particular project.

Allers was reportedly trying to make a grand, sweeping musical akin to The Lion King, whereas Dindal was just aiming to make the movie as entertaining as possible, emphasising humour and a quick pace.

Unfortunately for Allers, Disney preferred Dindal's approach: the company was disappointed with the results of its two recent animated musicals - Pocahontas and The Hunchback Of Notre Dame - both of which were similar to the kind of movie Allers was trying to make with Kingdom of the Sun.

This led to Disney executives threatening to shut the film down if it could not be molded into a more cohesive shape, preferably one that took its cues from Dindal's ideas. Since Allers was the original director, the studio approached him with their concerns, but when the two parties couldn't reach an agreement, Allers left the project.

At this stage, roughly a quarter of the film had been animated, but Dindal - who stayed on as director - had to start from scratch, developing a brand new story, new storyboards, and completely reshaping several characters. The resulting Emperor's New Groove is essentially a buddy-cop comedy, a million miles away from the slower, emotionally-driven musical that Allers had originally envisioned.