9 Awesome Movies That Started Out As Short Films

What a difference a few decades can make. Frankenweenie was a live action short put together by Tim Burton for Disney, but he was fired after they saw the final product. Despite being a sweet little movie they deemed it too frightening for a young audience, and accused the director of wasting company resources.

Twenty-five years later Burton had become an icon, and when he decided to make a stop-motion version of the story Disney leapt at the chance. The two movies have the same setup, where a boy brings his dog back to life after he’s hit by a car.

While Burton has a horrible tendency of repeating himself – no prizes for guessing who the composer is – Frankenweenie is one of his better latter-day movies. The animation is charmingly old fashioned, the voice acting is terrific, and it has the emotion that’s often lacking in his live action efforts.