What if The Thief and the Cobbler was a co-production of Spumco

The Thief and the Cobbler is an British-American-Canadian animated fantasy film co-written and directed by Richard Williams. Originally conceived in the 1960s, the film was in and out of production for nearly three decades due to independent funding and ambitiously complex animation. It was finally placed into full production in 1989, when Warner Bros. agreed to finance and distribute the film. When production went over budget and behind schedule, it was co-produced by Spumco. It was eventually released by Geffen Pictures through Warner Bros. in 1993. The film performed successfully at the box office and received mixed reviews.

The Thief and the Cobbler is among one of the films with the longest production times. It is the final film for several actors and artists, including animators Ken Harris (died 1982), Errol Le Cain (died 1989), Emery Hawkins (died 1989), Grim Natwick (died 1990), and Art Babbitt (died 1992), and including actors Felix Aylmer (died 1979), Eddie Byrne (died 1981), Clinton Sundberg (died 1987), Kenneth Williams (died 1988), Sir Anthony Quayle (died 1989), and Vincent Price (died 1993, one month after the film's initial release). It maintained a cult following.

Plot
The prosperous Golden City is ruled by the narcoleptic King Nod and protected by three Golden Balls atop its tallest minaret. According to a prophecy, the city would fall to "destruction and death" if the Balls are removed, and could only be saved by "the simplest soul with the smallest and simplest of things". Living in the city is a cobbler, Tack, and a nameless, unsuccessful yet persistent Thief, both mute.

When the Thief sneaks into Tack's house, the two get stitched together and stumble outside, causing Tack's tacks to fall onto the street. Zigzag, King Nod's Grand Vizier, who speaks in rhyme, steps on one of the tacks and orders Tack to be arrested while the Thief escapes. Tack is brought before King Nod and his daughter, Princess Yum-Yum. Before Zigzag can convince King Nod to have Tack beheaded, Yum-Yum saves Tack by ordering him to fix a shoe she intentionally breaks. During repairs, Tack and Yum-Yum become increasingly attracted to each other, much to the jealousy of Zigzag, who plots to take over the kingdom by marrying the princess.

Meanwhile, the Thief, having noticed the Golden Balls atop the minaret on the courtyard, breaks into the palace through a gutter. He steals the repaired shoe from Tack, prompting the cobbler to chase him through the palace. Upon retrieving the shoe, Tack bumps into Zigzag, who notices the shoe is fixed and imprisons Tack in a cell.

One-Eyes, a race of warlike, cycloptic monsters, plan to destroy the city, and have already slaughtered much of its frontier guard, all except for one mortally wounded soldier who escapes to warn the city; the next morning, King Nod has a vision of them. While Zigzag tries to convince Nod of the kingdom's security, the Thief steals the Balls after several attempts, only to lose them to Zigzag's minions. Tack escapes from his cell using his cobbling tools during the ensuing panic. King Nod notices the Balls' disappearance when the soldier warns them of the invading One-Eyes. Zigzag attempts to use the stolen Balls to negotiate Yum-Yum's hand in marriage in exchange for returning the Balls, but when King Nod dismisses him, Zigzag defects to the One-Eyes and gives them the Balls instead.

King Nod sends Yum-Yum, her nurse, and Tack to ask for help from a "mad and holy old Witch" in the desert. They are secretly followed by the Thief, who hears of a golden idol on the journey but fails in stealing it. In the desert, they discover a band of dimwitted brigands, led by Chief Roofless, whom Yum-Yum recruits as her bodyguards. They reach the hand-shaped tower where the Witch lives, and learn that Tack is prophesied to save the Golden City. The Witch also presents a riddle—"Attack, attack, Tack! A tack, see? But it's what you do with what you've got!"—before destroying the entire tower with a storm cloud. Tack and the others return to the Golden City to find the One-Eyes' massive war machine approaching. Tack shoots a single tack into the enemy's midst, sparking a Goldberg-esque chain reaction that destroys the entire One-Eye army. Zigzag tries to escape but falls into a pit where he is eaten alive by alligators and his vulture, Phido. The Thief, avoiding death with almost every step, steals the Golden Balls from the collapsing machine, only to run into Tack whilst escaping, and after a brief scuffle, he reluctantly gives up and leaves Tack with the Balls. With peace restored, and the prophecy fulfilled, the city celebrates Cheer as Tack and Yum-Yum marry; Tack finally says "I love you" in a very deep voice. The film ends with the Thief stealing the reel of film and running away.

Development and early production as Nasrudin (1964–1972)
In 1964, Richard Williams, a Canadian animator living in the United Kingdom, was running an animation studio assigned to animate commercials and special sequences for live-action films. Williams illustrated a series of books by Idries Shah, which collected the tales of Mulla Nasruddin, a philosophical yet "wise fool" of Near Eastern folklore from the 13th century. Williams began development work on a film based on the stories, with Shah and his family championing production. Shah asked for 50% of the profits from the film, and his sister, author and folklorist Amina Shah, who had done some of the translations for the Nasrudin books, stated ownership of the stories. Production took place at Richard Williams Productions in Soho Square, London. An early reference to the project came in the 1968 International Film Guide, which noted that Williams was about to begin work on "the first of several films based on the stories featuring Mulla Nasruddin".

Williams took on television and feature film projects in order to fund his project, and work on his film progressed slowly. Williams hired veteran Warner Bros. animator Ken Harris as a chief animator on the project, which was then titled The Amazing Nasrudin. Roy Naisbitt was hired to design backgrounds for the film, and promotional art showed intricate Indian and Persian designs. In 1970, the project was re-titled The Majestic Fool. For the first time, a potential distributor for the independent film was mentioned–in this case, British Lion Film Corporation. The International Film Guide noted that the Williams Studio's staff had increased to forty people for production of the feature. Williams gained further attention when he and the studio produced a TV adaptation of A Christmas Carol for Chuck Jones, which won the studio an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.

Dialogue tracks for the film, now being referred to as just Nasrudin, were recorded at this time. Actor Vincent Price was hired to perform the voice of the villain Anwar, later renamed "Zigzag", originally assigned to Kenneth Williams. Price was hired to make the villain more enjoyable for Williams, as he was a great fan of Price's work and Zigzag was based on two people that Williams hated. In addition to Price, Sir Anthony Quayle was cast as King Nod.

According to composer Howard Blake, Williams and the studio had animated around three hours of footage for Nasrudin by 1972. Blake insisted to Williams that while he thought the footage was excellent, he needed to structure the film and his footage into a three-act plot. The Shah family had a bookkeeper who was not keeping track of the studio's accounting, so Williams felt that producer Omar Ali-Shah had been embezzling financing from the studio for his own purposes. As a result, Williams was forced to abandon Nasrudin, as the Shah family took the rights of his illustrations, and Paramount Pictures withdrew a deal they had been negotiating. However, the Shah family allowed Williams to keep characters he designed for the books and the movie, including a thief character that was Williams' favorite.

Prolonged production (1972–1978)
In 1973, Williams commissioned a new script from Howard Blake, who wrote a treatment called Tin Tack that incorporated a character who is a clumsy cobbler named Tack, and retained Williams' thief character from Nasrudin. The script would later be scrapped, but the character of Tack would be incorporated in another script written by Margaret French, which would use characters from Nasrudin, including a sleepy king, a thief and an evil vizier originally named Anwar. Many scenes that did not include Nasrudin himself were also retained. Throughout the 1970s, Williams would further rewrite the script with Margaret French, his wife at the time.

Williams later began promising his new film as a "100-minute Panavision animated epic feature film with a hand-drawn cast of thousands." The characters were renamed at this point. Zigzag speaks mostly in rhyme throughout the entire film, while the other characters—with the exceptions of the Thief and Tack, who are mute—speak normally. Williams stated that he did not intend to follow "the Disney route" with his film, stating that it would be "the first animated film with a real plot that locks together like a detective story at the end." He also said that with its two mute main characters, it was essentially "a silent movie with a lot of sound." Silent comedies, like films from Charlie Chaplin and Harry Langdon, were already an inspiration on Nasrudin and carried over to the new film. Tack was modeled after said silent film stars.

British illustrator Errol Le Cain created inspirational paintings and backgrounds, setting the style for the film. During the decades that the film was being made, the characters were redesigned several times and scenes were reanimated. Test animation of Princess Yum-Yum, as featured in the released versions, was traced from the live-action film Muqaddar Ka Sikandar, with her design slightly changed later on in production. In Williams' early drafts, the climax included a final battle with Zigzag after the collapse of the War Machine, where he conjures a larger-than-life Chinese dragon, only for Tack to reveal it to be nothing more than an inflatable balloon. Although there were some production designs of said scene, it was never made since it was found to be too difficult to animate.

In 1974, a recession forced the studio to focus primarily on various TV commercial, special and feature film title assignments, leaving Williams' film to be worked on as a side project. Since Williams had no money to have a full team working on the film, which was a "giant epic", production dragged for decades. Ken Harris was still chief animator on the film, as he had been since Nasrudin, and Williams would assign him sequences while he was supervising production on commercials. To save money, scenes were kept in pencil stage without colour, as advised by Richard Purdum: "Work on paper! Don't put it in colour. Don't spend on special effects. Don't do camera-work, tracing or painting... just do the rough drawings!" Williams was planning to later finish these sequences when the financing would come in.

Williams was learning the art of animation himself during the production of his film; his animation during the 1960s typically featured stylized designs in the vein of UPA animated shorts. Williams hired veteran animators from the golden age of animation, such as Art Babbitt, Emery Hawkins and Grim Natwick, to work at his studio in London and help teach him and his staff. Williams learned also from Milt Kahl, Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston, and Ken Anderson at Disney, to whom he made yearly visits and would later pass their knowledge to the new generation of animators. Williams also allowed animators like Natwick and Babbitt to work on the studio assignments, such as the 1977 feature Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure. The Mad Holy Old Witch was designed as a caricature of animator Grim Natwick, by whom she was animated. After Natwick died, Williams would animate the Witch himself.

As years passed, the project became more ambitious. Williams said that his idea was "to make the best animated film that has ever been made—there really is no reason why not." He also envisioned the film to feature very detailed and complex animation, the likes he thought no other studio would attempt to achieve. Additionally, much of the film's animation would be photographed "on ones", meaning that the animation would run at full 24 frames per second as opposed to the more common animation "on twos", in twelve frames per second.

Gaining financial backing (1978–1988)
In 1978, Saudi Arabian prince Mohammed bin Faisal Al Saud became interested in The Thief, and agreed to fund a ten-minute test sequence with a budget of $100,000. Williams chose the complex, penultimate sequence of the Thief in the War Machine for the test. The studio missed two deadlines, and the scene was completed in late 1979 for $250,000. Despite his positive impression of the finished scene, Faisal backed out of the production because of missed deadlines and budgetary overruns.

In the 1980s, Williams put together a 20-minute sample reel of The Thief, which he showed to Milt Kahl, a friend and one of his animation mentors, at Skywalker Ranch in Marin County. Star Wars producer Gary Kurtz briefly worked with Williams to attempt to get financing in the mid-1980s. In 1986, Williams met producer Jake Eberts, who began funding the production through his Allied Filmmakers company and eventually provided US$10 million of the film's $28 million budget. Allied's distribution and sales partner Majestic Films began promoting the film in industry trades under the working title Once.... At this time, Eberts encouraged Williams to make changes to the script. A subplot involving the characters of Princess Mee-Mee, Yum-Yum's identical twin sister voiced by Catherine Schell, and the Prince Bubba, who had been turned into an ogre and was voiced by Thick Wilson, was deleted, and some of Grim Natwick's animation of the Witch had to be discarded. Also deleted was Ken Harris's sequence of a Brigand dreaming of a Biblical temptress.

Steven Spielberg saw the footage of The Thief and was impressed enough that he and Robert Zemeckis asked Williams to direct the animation of Zemeckis' film Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Williams agreed in order to get financing for The Thief and the Cobbler and get it finally finished. Roger Rabbit was released by Disney (under their Touchstone Pictures banner) in 1988, and became a blockbuster hit. Williams won two Oscars for his animation and contributions to the visual effects. Although Roger Rabbit ran over budget before animation production began, the success of the film proved that Williams could work within a studio structure and turn out high-quality animation on time and within budget. Disney and Spielberg told Williams that in return for doing Roger Rabbit, they would help distribute his film. This plan did not come to pass. Disney began to put their attention more in their own feature animation, while Spielberg instead opened a rival feature animation studio in London.

Following his success, Williams and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warner_Bros. Warner Bros.] negotiated a funding and a distribution deal for The Thief and the Cobbler, which included a $25 million marketing budget. Williams' current wife Imogen Sutton suggested him to finance Thief with European backers, citing his appreciation of foreign films. Richard insisted he could produce the film with a major studio. Williams and Warner Bros. signed a negative pickup deal in late 1988, and Williams also received financial aid from Japanese investors. He later stated, "In hindsight we should have just gone to Europe, take another five years, made it on our own, and then go to a distributor and get people who find it as a novelty."

Production under Warner Bros. (1989–1992)
With the new funding, the film finally went into full production in 1989. Williams scoured art schools in Europe and Canada to find talented artists. At this point, with almost all the original animators either deceased or having long since moved on to other projects, production began mostly with a new, younger team of animators, including Richard's own son Alexander Williams. In a 1988 interview with Jerry Beck, Williams stated that he had two and a half hours of pencil tests for Thief, and had not storyboarded the film since he found such a method to be too controlling. Vincent Price had originally recorded his dialogue from 1967 to 1973. Williams recorded further dialogue with Price for the 1990 production, but Price's old age and illness meant that some lines remained unfinished.

Williams had experimented with shots with characters animated by hand to move in three dimensions, including several shots in Roger Rabbit's opening sequence. With Thief, Williams began planning several sequences to feature a greater use of this technique, including Tack and the Thief's palace chase, which was achieved without computer-generated imagery. According to rumours, Williams approached The Thief with a live-action point of view, coming off of Roger Rabbit. He was creating extra footage and extending sequences to trim down later, and would have edited down the workprint he later assembled.

Warner Bros. had signed a deal with the Completion Bond Company to ensure that the studio would be given a finished film, otherwise they would finish The Thief under their management. Dedicated but pressured, Williams was taking his time to ensure sequences would look perfect. Animators were working overtime, sometimes with sixty hours a week required, to get the film done. While Williams encouraged the best out of people, discipline was harsh and animators were frequently fired. Cameraman John Leatherbarrow recalled, "He fired hundreds of people. There's a list as long as your arm of people fired by Dick. It was a regular event. [...] There was one guy who got fired on the doorstep." Williams was just as hard on himself, with animator Roger Vizard stating, "He was the first person in the morning and the last one out at night." Funders pressured Williams to make finished scenes of the main characters for a marketing trailer. The final designs were made for the characters at this time.

The film was not finished by a 1991 deadline that Warner Bros. originally imposed upon Williams, and had approximately 10 to 15 minutes of screen time to complete, which, at Williams' rate, was estimated to take "a tight six months" or longer. The animation department at Warner Bros. had put their enthusiasm towards high-quality television animation, but had little confidence towards backing feature animation. The studio had already released The Nutcracker Prince, a Canadian-produced animated feature, in 1990 to almost no promotion. Jean MacCurdy, Warner Bros.' then-head of animation, did not know anything about animation, as she admitted to an artist who had worked for Williams while she was seeing footage of The Thief. Another animator salvaged almost 40 minutes of 35 mm dailies footage from MacCurdy's trash. Meanwhile, Walt Disney Feature Animation had begun work on Aladdin, a film that bore striking resemblances in story, style and character to The Thief and the Cobbler; for example, the character Zigzag from Thief shares many physical characteristics with both Aladdin villain Jafar, and its Genie, as animated by Williams Studio alumnus Andreas Deja and Eric Goldberg.

The Completion Bond Company asked television animation producer Fred Calvert to do a detailed analysis of the production status. Calvert traveled to Williams' London studio several times to check on the progress of the film, and concluded that Williams was "woefully behind schedule and way over budget." Williams had a script, but "he wasn't following it faithfully." According to Garrett Gilchrist, however, this anecdote is false, as Calvert and people from the Completion Bond Company were visiting the studio more often towards the end of production. Williams was giving dailies of sequences that were finished or scrapped since the 1980s, hoping to give an indication of progress to Warner Bros. He was asked to show the investors a rough copy of the film with the remaining scenes filled in with storyboards in order to establish the film's narrative. He made a workprint which combined finished footage, pencil tests, storyboards, and movements from the symphonic suite Scheherazade to cover the 10–15 minutes left to finish. Animators found out that they had completed more than enough footage for an 85-minute feature, but they had yet to finish certain vital sequences involving the central story.

On 13 May 1992, this rough version of the film was shown to Warner Bros., and was not well-received. During the screening, the penultimate reel of the film was missing, which did not help matters. The studio lost confidence and backed out of production entirely, and the Completion Bond Company seized control of the film, ousting Williams from the project. Jake Eberts, then an executive producer, also abandoned the project. Additionally, Williams said that the production had lost a source of funding when Japanese investors pulled out due to the recession following the Japanese asset price bubble. Fans have cited this decision as an example of a trend of animated films being tampered with by studio executives.

Production under Spumco (1992–1993)
John Kricfalusi of Spumco (the creator of The Ren & Stimpy Show) had previously offered to solve story problems with Richard Williams, suggested bringing in Jim Smith to consult, and proposed to allow Williams to finish the film under her supervision. Williams reportedly agreed to John K.'s proposal, which was approved by the Completion Bond Company, whom the company had assigned to finish the film as it took Spumco 18 months, which was not to be involved with Nickelodeon.

Releases
After the movie was completed, Geffen Pictures through Warner Bros. (which was backed out of production since 1992.) acquired the distribution rights from the Completion Bond Company. The film was released on 31 December 1993. It opened worldwide, and grossed US$319,723 (on an estimated budget of $24 million) during its theatrical run.

Home media
The film was released on VHS by Warner Home Video in June 15, 1994. A widescreen LaserDisc was also released. On April 1, 1997, the film was released on DVD by Warner Home Video.

In 2008, the film was released on Blu-Ray by Warner Home Video.

In 2017, the film was released on 4k Ultra HD by Warner Home Video.

Reception
The film was a commercial success and received mixed reviews. Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 56% based on reviews. In 2003, the Online Film Critics Society named the film the 81st greatest animated film of all time. In addition, the film won the 1994 Academy of Family Films Award.

For years, Richard Williams was devastated by the film's production and had never publicly discussed it since then. In 2010, however, he discussed the film during an interview about his silent animated short Circus Drawings, a project he shelved in the 1960s before he started work on The Thief.

Influence
The Secret of Kells, Song of the Sea and Wolfwalkers, three Irish animated films that based their style on traditional native art, had The Thief and the Cobbler cited as one of their main inspirations. Tomm Moore, the director of all three films, said, "Some friends in college and I were inspired by The Thief and the Cobbler and the Disney movie Mulan, which took indigenous traditional art as the starting point for a beautiful style of 2D animation. I felt that something similar could be done with Irish art."

Other animated films with long production histories

 * The Overcoat, an unfinished Russian animated film, in production since 1981.
 * The King and the Mockingbird, a French animated film, produced in two parts (1948–52, 1967–80), initially released in recut form, but eventually finished as per director's wishes.
 * The Tragedy of Man, a Hungarian animated film, produced in 1988 and premiered in 2011.
 * Mad God, an American stop-motion animated film, started circa 1990, and premiered in 2021. There was a 20-year hiatus.