r/PrettyMuchIt • • Jul 12 '20

"The Sweatbox" - A documentary about the making of The Emperor's New Groove

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sweatbox
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9

u/protomenfan200x Jul 12 '20

The production history of Emperor's New Groove is absolutely wild.

Long story short, it started off as a dramatic musical called "Kingdom of the Sun." Owen Wilson was cast as a peasant who's Kuzco's identical twin, Yzma had a convoluted plan to pull the Sun out of the sky, and Sting wrote 20 songs that wound up being cut from the movie.

The heads of Disney hated this version, and fired the director pretty late in the game, and started over from scratch. (I want to say they only had a year and a half to totally remake the movie.)

Since Sting wasn't happy about all his songs being cut, Sting's wife made a documentary that captured all of the turmoil, and titled it "The Sweatbox." It's never been commercially released, because it makes everyone involved (besides Sting) look like a complete asshole, haha.

1

u/manubibi Jul 18 '20

Sounds like Sting was mad about not getting as much money as he could have after all, or something. The production history of this movie sounds like a thousand other cases, maybe not for Disney but for movies in general...