10 Movies WAY Darker Than Originally Advertised

Released in 2006, Chicken Little was a Disney retelling of the classic children’s story. The film also doubled as a star vehicle for Scrubs’ Zach Braff, who found himself in high demand after the success of Garden State.

It seemed from the trailers to be a pretty typical, sweet, and silly piece of fluffy kids entertainment from the reliably lighthearted studio... which made the film's actual tone all the more of an odd and unexpected surprise.

This bizarrely mean spirited animated family film saw Disney try to out-cynical Dreamworks and go way too far in the process, resulting in a release too childish for adult viewers and too bleak for the intended audience.

Our titular hero is fairly unlikeable, but his mistreatment by disbelieving friends and family is nonetheless disproportionate and hard to laugh off, resulting in a finished film where viewers were uncertain who they were intended to root for. Hardly a dealbreaker for most movies, the lack of a likeable hero or clearly good characters did prove damning for a film intended to appeal to small children.