THE BLACK CAULDRON is on the drawing boards at Walt Disney Productions as the cartoon feature to follow in production after completion of THE FOX AND THE HOUND, currently in the works. Property is an original Sword & Sorcery fantasy in the tradition of Tolkien Lord of the Rings trilogy, and is part of an effort at Disney to change the studio for Kids Only image.
Disney's roots are strongest in the animated cartoon field, but the studio has seen its pool of creative artists dwindle as the pioneering animators, the veterans who created such classics as SNOW WHITE & THE 7 DWARFS and BAMBI, retire and leave the field. A shortage of qualified animators as well as the tremendous labor costs involved in their work forced Ralph Bakshi to depend almost entirely on rotoscoping for LORD OF THE RINGS. Disney, however, has reinstituted a training program for young animators, began by Walt Disney in the early thirties, to assure the qualified manpower necessary for their animated film program.
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