How Mikey Mouse Almost Got to Play Christopher Columbus

Jim Hill

17 years ago

How are you supposed to celebrate Columbus Day anyway?

I mean, I suppose — if Walt Disney Animation Studios had actually completed that Mickey Mouse featurette back in the early 1990s (You know? That half-hour-long film in which the world’s most famous mouse was supposed to have portrayed Christoper Columbus?) — I guess that we all could have commemorated this three-day-long weekend by slinging that disc into our DVD players.

What’s that you say? You never heard that WDAS once had a Mickey-plays-Christopher-Columbus featurette in development? Oh. Well, then just sit right down and you’ll hear a tale. A tale of a fateful trip …

Oops. Sorry about that. I seem to be getting my “Mighty Sailing Men” confused.

Anyway … Let’s start off by by setting the Wayback Machine for the late 1980s. Back when Disney was just getting serious about getting back into the animation business. And Mouse House managers were wondering what they could do to revive Mickey’s career.

Oh, sure. Back then, the Mouse was still huge at the theme parks (In fact, in the Summer of 1988, the Imagineers actually added a whole new “land” to WDW’s Magic Kingdom — Mickey’s Birthdayland — to help celebrate this character’s 60th anniversary). But when it came to the silver screen, the Mouse’s appearances had become rather sporadic. With his last film being “Mickey’s Christmas Carol” (Which was released to theaters in 1983).

The new management team at Disney really wanted to raise Mickey’s profile (With the hope that modern audiences would then re-embrace this classic character. Which would make it that much easier for Disney Consumer Products to start moving more merchandise that featured the Mouse’s likeness). Which is why it was then decided that WDAS should put a new series of Mickey Mouse featurettes into production.

The original plan was that the studio would release a new half-hour-long animated featurette that starred Mickey every two years. With the first of these films being 1990’s “The Prince and the Pauper.”

And given that the second film in this series was due to hit theaters in 1992 (i.e. The 500th anniversary of Columbus’ first voyage to the New World) … Well, to the guys in WDAS’s story department, this seemed like a natural hook for the second Mickey Mouse featurette. So — as animation got underway on “The Prince and the Pauper” — story work got underway on “Christopher Columbus” as well as a third film in the series, “Mickey’s Arabian Adventure.”

“So why didn’t we ever get the chance to see this second Mickey Mouse featurette? Or ‘Mickey’s Arabian Adventure’ for that matter?,” you ask. Well, there were a couple of reasons, actually.

For one, Disney’s storymen could never quite find a politically-correct way around the whole indigenous people problem. In that — once Columbus arrived in the New World — this animated feaurette was going to have to show some sort of encounter between Capt. Mickey, his crew and the folks who were already living on Hispaniola. And Mouse House managers were concerned that — if Disney Feature Animation played this scene for laughs — it could wind up causing a lot of problems for the studio.

Then — on the heels of “The Little Mermaid” ‘s surprising success in the Fall of 1989 — a decision was made to concentrate all of WDAS’s efforts on producing new full-length features. Which is why the satellite facility at Disney-MGM Studios theme park (Which had originally been set up just to produce new featurettes & shorts for the company) began working on entire sequences for upcoming films like “Beauty & the Beast” and “The Lion King.”

As for “Mickey’s Arabian Adventure” … Once the studio decided to go forward with production of “Aladdin,” it just didn’t make much sense for the studio to proceed with development of a featurette that would feature many of the same settings & story elements as that Ron Clements & John Musker production. Which is how the third Mickey Mouse featurette wound up getting spiked.

Now where this gets interesting — in spite of the fact that this Mickey Mouse “Christopher Columbus” featurette never actually went into production — evidently the development art for this project did make it over to Disney Consumer Products. Which is why — every so often — you’ll see the company put out merch that does feature Mickey dressed as the famous captain.

Mind you, “Christopher Columbus” wasn’t the first time that Walt Disney Animation Studios toyed with the idea of producing a Mickey Mouse featurette that would have had these classic characters embarking on a high seas adventure. There was also “Swabbies” …

… But the story of that particular 1980s era project should probably wait for another day. For now … Just enjoy what’s left of your three hour tour … er … Three day weekend, okay?

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