The Walt Disney Company has continued to make numerous acquisitions over the years. As they amass a number of high-profile studios, there's a number of movies that ultimately fall by the wayside and halt their development. What's more, sometimes Disney's creative endeavors simply don't pan out.
In most cases, either the story simply wasn't working or a large-scale business move meant that production had to be changed. Whether it's a live-action take on a classic, a new animated adventure, or a sci-fi world, these movies didn't manage to survive.
Honorable Mention: Muppets Live Another Day
The Muppets are one of the most recognizable brands that Disney owns. While they are looking into multiple projects starring Kermit and the gang, it hasn't always been smooth sailing for the property, especially not on Disney+. Muppets Now is currently the streaming exclusive but it was almost something very different.
Josh Gad was previously working on a project that was pitched as an extremely long Muppets movie, dissected into a show. Eventually scrapped, the project looked at the gang being disbanded and brought back together after an unsuccessful stint on Broadway.
Nimona
As part of Disney's acquisition of 20th Century Fox, they acquired the animation studio known as Blue Sky. The company decided to shut it down, but with it came a number of projects that fans were looking forward to getting completely canned.
Among them was an LGBTQ+ story called Nimona. With a fantastic cast in place, the story was based upon a webcomic which was created by Noelle Stevenson. It's a shocking loss for the studio, especially considering how far into production the movie was.
Inhumans
Marvel Studios very rarely announces a project that they don't actually put into production, but Inhumans was one of the rare exceptions to this rule. Granted, the movie project moved into the realm of TV, where it flopped majorly on ABC and is seemingly no longer part of the MCU.
The reason behind the movie's cancellation is especially complicated and revolves around a number of high-profile decision-makers at the top of the company. Ultimately, Kevin Feige passed on the project, which may have been for the best. Luckily there are still some great Inhuman characters in Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Newt
Pixar is very protective over their production line and it's incredibly rare to see them work on a movie for an extended period of time before canceling it. That's what had to happen with Newt, though, which creatively just wasn't working out.
There's a lot of information detailing the decision-making that ultimately went into canning the potential hit. However, Ed Catmull revealed that nobody was able to really make the project work and it was for the benefit of the studio to leave it behind. Pixar is so well known for producing hits, they couldn't afford a dud.
King Of The Elves
King of the Elves is another promising project from Disney's animation house that seemingly went quite far into production before the rug was eventually pulled from underneath it. It was originally based on the short story by Phillip K. Dick.
The team behind its development eventually moved on to Big Hero 6, and the movie got slowly forgotten about. Perhaps it simply didn't fit into Disney's upcoming slate, but despite some concept art, very little is known about what could have been.
Mort
Terry Pratchett has become one of the world's most recognizable and well-respected names within the fantasy genre. Amongst his Discworld novels is Mort, which Disney attempted to bring into the world of animation with their own feature-length film.
It would not have been an easy task to take on such a massive franchise and indeed very few have managed to capture the spirit of Discworld on screen. Disney eventually abandoned the plans due to problems concerning the film rights and how long the production process was taking. The team moved on to Moana instead.
The Graveyard Book
Neil Gaiman has also created a number of novels and comics that are perfect for adaptation to the big or small screen. Disney attempted to do just that with both his comic and book iterations of The Graveyard Book, one of his most popular works.
It's quite a dark and grim story, which might be a reason why Disney couldn't quite find their way. At one stage it was even moved over to Pixar but was ultimately shut down as some of the key creative personnel decided to move on from the project. It was even going to be stop motion.
Runaways
The Runaways are a huge Marvel property, who have been strongly utilized in both the comics and the small screen. Much like Inhumans, though, this group of teenagers was originally supposed to make their big-screen debut before moving to Hulu.
There had even been a screenplay put together for the project and Kevin Feige spoke openly about developing the project. Although Marvel did go in a different direction, there's always hope that Runaways could be seen on the big screen in the MCU's future.
Flash Gordon
Flash Gordon is an instantly recognizable name and yet no studio has managed to put together a reboot for the franchise quite yet. Not so long ago Fox was moving ahead with a project, which saw Taika Waititi head up both the directing and the writing.
However, after Disney's acquisition of Fox, they started looking into all of the projects that were in development. They made the decision to scrap Flash Gordon, likely due to wanting a clean slate and Waititi's own schedule becoming even busier.
Gigantic
Gigantic could have been the most promising movie that Disney ever scrapped. Another project from their animation studio, the basic premise was to adapt yet another fairytale, this time that of Jack and the Beanstalk. The results would have been magical.
A logo and concept art had even been revealed for the project, which looked to be in its later stages of development. The announcement eventually came that Disney wanted to put their efforts elsewhere since the project just wasn't coming together.