Ever Ever After: Celebrating Enchanted’s 15th Anniversary
In the fall of 2007, Walt Disney Pictures released a particular movie called Enchanted. But the story doesn’t stop there.
Beginnings
in 1997, screenwriter Billy Kelly came up with the idea and pitched it to Disney.
Image Credit: Disney
Unfortunately, while the concept interested Disney, they felt Kelly’s first treatment was too mature for them. Over the years, the studio tried to get the project off the ground with different people to direct and star in it.
But in 2005, Disney animation veteran, Kevin Lima, who directed A Goofy Movie and Tarzan, took over the project. His first decision was to have the film be both a pastiche and a send-up of Disney animated fairy tales.
Photo Credit: movie web.com
Actors
Later that year, Kevin began bringing in actors to star in the movie. For the lead character, Gisselle, Amy Adams was chosen because she looked like a live-action Disney princess.
The rest of the stars, including Patrick Dempsey, James Marsden, and Susan Saradon were brought in later.
Alan Menken. Image: Disney Channel PR
Songs
An aspect that made Enchanted important was that it brought Alan Menken back to Disney. Alan felt that after the failure of the animated film, Home on the Range, his time at Disney was over.
But when it was decided to make this new movie a musical, they immediately thought of Alan and teamed him up with lyricist, Stephen Schwartz, who worked with Alan before on Disney’s Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Photo Credit: fanpop.com
Filming
Enchanted was the first time Disney did a full-length live-action/animation combination film since Who Framed Roger Rabbit. The live-action filming took four months to complete, while animation production to 72 days.
What’s also important is this is the film that brought traditional animation back to Disney.
People that know Disney’s history well would know that in 2002, Disney executives decided to phase out traditional animation in favor of computer animation after the failure of the hand-drawn films of the 2000s and the major success of the computer-animated from Pixar and DreamWorks.
But Kevin Lima decided that traditional animation would be best for Enchanted.
Release
After 10 years since the idea was conceived, Enchanted was released on Thanksgiving weekend of 2007. It would be very well-received and would be the 15th most successful movie of the year.
But, what makes this special movie important is that just as Who Framed Roger Rabbit renewed interest in animation, Enchanted was able to renew interest in the heyday of Disney. This would help spearhead what fans call the Disney Revival which would start the year after with the release of the animated film Bolt.
Even after 15 years, certain fans would still give credit to Disney’s newfound success to Enchanted.
