The Big Picture
- Walt Disney Animation Studios loves adapting pre-existing narratives, but the planned adaptation of Terry Pratchett’s Mort fell through due to rights issues.
- Pratchett was skeptical of the studios adapting his Discworld novels after being told to remove a critical character in a proposed version of Mort.
- The failure of Mort’s adaptation led to the development of other successful Disney films like Moana, but also signaled the end of hand-drawn animation at the studio.
Walt Disney Animation Studios has made adapting pre-existing narratives a core part of its identity. From the start with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the studio’s output has leaned on reinterpreting characters that everyone is familiar with, like Tarzan, Cinderella, Baloo, and countless others. Such figures typically are in the public domain, which makes it extra easy for Disney to exploit such characters for their own purposes. In recent years, Disney has begun slightly increasing the presence of original projects in its library (as seen by Encanto and Raya and the Last Dragon, among others), but titles like Big Hero 6 show that this studio still loves to tackle productions deeply rooted in pre-existing properties.
In the early 2010s, Walt Disney Animation Studios and two of its most iconic filmmakers (Ron Clements and John Musker) nearly embarked on yet another adaptation, though this time the source material would be more modern. Clements and Musker were eager to adapt Mort, a Terry Pratchett fantasy novel that served as the fourth installment in the Discworld franchise. This project was released in 1987, hundreds of years after the creation of many of the stories Disney Animation Studios had previously adapted. It temporarily looked like this could be an exciting melding of very distinctive creative sensibilities…but Mort ended up going nowhere. How come this particular Walt Disney Animation Studios adaptation didn’t get off the ground?
What Were the Plans for the Adaptation of ‘Mort?’
Discworld, like many works penned by Terry Pratchett, has cultivated a massive fan base over the years. Just that image of a world situated on top of a quartet of elephants situated on top of a massive turtle has become an inescapable sight in pop culture. Despite the Discworld novels becoming so famous and influential, there haven’t been any major adaptations of these tales in the world of cinema (TV has been a bit luckier in this regard, as seen by the existence of three TV movie adaptations of these novels in the 2000s). Interestingly, Pratchett’s dubiousness over Hollywood studios being able to nail a film adaptation of the Discworld books came in the 1990s with a proposed version of Mort. In discussions with a Hollywood studio on this adaptation, Pratchett was told the movie version of Mort would have to ditch Death, a critical character in the text.
This was an encounter that set the stage for how much Pratchett despised the idea of his adaptations getting twisted into something conventional for Hollywood studios. Since then, he retained a very understandable aloofness towards Hollywood right up until his passing in 2015. Still, an adaptation of Mort specifically did get close to being realized at Walt Disney Animation Studios at the dawn of the 2010s. This was when Musker and Clement had just finished up The Princess and the Frog for the Mouse House and were looking at what project to do next. Blue Sky Disney would report in October 2010 that the duo was planning to do an adaptation of Mort was their next production…kind of. The site claimed that this wouldn’t be an entirely exact adaptation of Mort but would be set in the Discworld realm and take many cues from that particular 1987 novel. This report also revealed that Mort was being planned as a hand-drawn animated project for a likely 2013/2014 release.
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The prospect of Disney tackling Mort was a fascinating one on several levels beyond just the fact that it meant adapting a piece of pre-existing media that wasn’t in the public domain. Pratchett’s Discworld books are unabashedly weird creations and often the very opposite of what one imagines when thinking about “Disney” material. Perhaps that’s why Clements, Musker, and Disney Animation brass were so keen on the production, though. Walt Disney Animation Studios circa. 2010 still needed to get its mojo back in the public eye. What better way to do that than to embrace an adaptation that didn’t immediately scream “Disney”? Plus, a hand-drawn approach to such unorthodox source material would suggest to audiences around the world that the medium of animation most associated with Disney could be applied to any story, not just princess musicals.
However, in March 2011, just a few months after this project went onto people’s radar, the dream of Walt Disney Animation Studios doing a partial Discworld adaptation were crushed. Reports emerged suggesting that the biggest problem was that Disney struggled to secure the film rights to the property, a challenge that this conglomerate usually didn’t have to grapple with when it came to its animated movies. Even if a Disney Animation title wasn’t based on a story in the public domain, something like Big Hero 6 was based on a comic book that the Mouse House already owned. Trying to get a hold of the Mort rights from an external company turned out to be too much of a challenge for Disney Animation executives, who opted to focus on other productions…including a little movie known as Moana.
Some Films Were Born From the Failure of ‘Mort’
In hindsight, a July 2011 piece from Blue Sky Disney about called “Untitled Road” about the next five years of Disney Animation turned out to be right on the money. For starters, months before it was officially announced by Disney, this site revealed that The Snow Queen (soon to be retitled Frozen) was back in the works at the studio while the mention of a “geek-friendly” project from director Don Hall turned out to be Big Hero 6, a production that wouldn’t be announced publicly for another year. In this piece, Blue Sky Disney reaffirms that Mort was dropped because of rights issues, with the writer illuminating that the project died because Disney needed to buy the film rights to the entire Discworld saga just to make Mort. That plan proved unfeasible for the studio and Musker and Clements were already at work on a new project.
In promoting that subsequent feature, Moana, Clements, and Musker confirmed that their proposed Mort movie died because of rights issues. The duo explained to Animation World Network that their disappointment with that development led to them seeking out original concepts for a new movie, leading them to the realm of Polynesian mythology and, eventually, Moana. It’s doubtful the world would’ve ever discovered that 2016 Disney feature if Mort hadn’t gone belly-up and freed up Clements and Musker. Walt Disney Animation dropping the hand-drawn animated Mort also cemented that Disney was out of the 2D animation game for the foreseeable future. Subsequent projects developed after Mort was lost, like Frozen and Zootopia, would be entirely CG creations. The art form Clements and Musker had worked with on their inaugural directorial efforts no longer had a place at the Mouse House.
At least those who may have looked forward to the project can still see some samples of concept art released by former animator Claire Keane. As for the prospect of Mort ever coming to the big screen, the only other stab at bringing this particular Discworld novel to the big screen came in 2016 with the announcement that famous screenwriter Terry Rossio would be penning an adaptation of this text. There have never been any further updates on the project, suggesting it too ran into problems it could never overcome. Maybe Mort was never meant to be a movie, maybe it can just be a beloved Terry Pratchett novel. Even if one never sees Mort on the big screen, at least the saga of it nearly becoming a Walt Disney Animation Studios feature will provide plenty of entertainment for Disney geeks for years to come.