“The Sweatbox” – The Documentary that Disney Didn’t Release

Disney’s “The Sweatbox,” which has been hidden inside their vault since 2002, has been uploaded by an 18-year-old cartoonist to Youtube. With tons of songs and animation that didn’t make the final cut of The Emperor’s New Groove, this video probably won’t be online for long, so catch it while you can!

UPDATE: And the video has now been removed from Youtube. Hopefully you got the chance to see it while it was up, or know how to get in touch with someone who downloaded it from Youtube. Or, best of all, maybe Disney will release a DVD version. Whatever the case, you can read all about it and catch trailers for some other great documentaries about Disney after the break!

Description from Wikipedia:

Trudie Styler, a documentarian, had been allowed to film the production of Kingdom of the Sun/The Emperor’s New Groove as part of the deal that originally brought her husband Sting to the project. As a result, Styler recorded on film much of the struggle, controversy, and troubles that went into making the picture (including the moment when producer Fullmer called Sting to inform the pop star that his songs were being deleted from the film). Styler’s completed documentary, The Sweatbox, premiered at the Toronto Film Festival on September 13, 2002. Disney owns the rights to the documentary and has not released it on home video or DVD.

While the movie does highlight the troubles in the production, it also feels even-handed over all, and does not paint Disney in a bad light. Rather, it is an outsiders look at a specific, hard process that, while having issues, creates a fantastic finished film.

If the film is offline, you can still read about a review and analysis here.

For additional viewing, check out these other great documentaries about Disney animation: