There's a lot of discussion going on about Alvin and the Chipmunks, of all things...
Likely because of that "movie" announced for 2028, and that the franchise is going to fully embrace generative-AI, the redesign of Alvin already indicating that. That is indeed terrible. I know some will look at that and say, "But Alvin and the Chipmunks was always schlocky. It all came from a novelty record, and this is something the Bagdasarians would do." Maybe, but anything going AI just sucks in general.
Nonetheless, it has prompted a lot of discussion of the older AatC stuff, from people who grew up on it. From before the live-action/CGI hybrids of the late '00s/early-to-mid '10s.
Admittedly, I'm no Alvin and the Chipmunks fanatic or anything. I probably watched the 1980s TV series on re-runs a little bit when I was a kid, and for whatever reason, I'm rather familiar with the 2000 direct-to-video movie released by Universal, ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS MEET THE WOLFMAN. I dug that one. Cartoon Network showed it a few times in around 2004. The original 1960s TV series has some appealing drawings and character design, too. That's about it, though.
Though, what fascinates me is the production of the 1987 feature THE CHIPMUNK ADVENTURE, which...
1987 was like a bit of a lull year for feature animation in the Western world. A bit of a lay-low period after things started to look up circa 1986. That, of course, was coming off of a rough few years. 1982's biggest animated movie was THE SECRET OF NIMH from Don Bluth, and that had only done okay at best, a summer release largely lost in the E.T. shuffle. There was even an animators' strike later that summer! 1983... Everything flopped or the releases were straight-up mishandled. 1984 was a real low, in that there was no new animated feature released theatrically in the U.S. Front to back. As far as I can tell, at least. The only animated movie releases that year were the usual Disney re-releases, THE JUNGLE BOOK and PINOCCHIO. 1984, thankfully, remained the last-ever year without a new animated feature in theaters. Then in 1985, Disney lost money on their big budget fantasy adventure THE BLACK CAULDRON, which no doubt put the animation wing in a predicament. The new management had recently taken over, and they were from Hollywood, not any inner circles... It was a little rough. Outside of THE CARE BEARS MOVIE, every other animated film that year didn't do so hot in theaters.
And yet, tides were slowly turning. Disney put PINOCCHIO on home video in the summer of 1985, and then reduced the high price for the holiday season, selling over half a million units. By the end of 1986, they saw great sales numbers w/ both PINOCCHIO and SLEEPING BEAUTY. What's more, the studio saw a modest hit with THE GREAT MOUSE DETECTIVE, in addition to successful theatrical re-releases of old favorites like LADY AND THE TRAMP. But what really made 1986 such a hopeful year was the return of Don Bluth, with Steven Spielberg at his side: AN AMERICAN TAIL opened during the Thanksgiving frame and became the highest-grossing animated film on its initial release, to date.
More work was to be done... But, Disney was going to need a year off, ditto Bluth's studio...
As a result, 1987 was kinda dry... THE CHIPMUNK ADVENTURE, but also the pseudo-compilation film THE PUPPETOON MOVIE and Filmation's PINOCCHIO AND THE EMPEROR OF THE NIGHT. None of those really made much at the box office. Something like Hyperion's THE BRAVE LITTLE TOASTER only screened in a few places, Disney - who were originally set to make the film, had the video/TV rights, and financed the production - actively sabotaged anyone's attempts at giving it a wide theatrical release, fast-tracking a Disney Channel premiere date for the movie. Yeah, that was 1987. A real calm before the storm... The only new thing from Disney - that they actually released - was a long-delayed special called SPORT GOOFY IN SOCCERMANIA, which aired on NBC in May 1987, and then disappeared afterwards. The half-hour featurette would be released on home video internationally.
1988 was where the needle really moved: WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT, OLIVER & COMPANY, and THE LAND BEFORE TIME.
THE CHIPMUNK ADVENTURE's tumultuous production has already been well-documented, in fact, a lot of the official word on what happened came from director Janice Karman herself, wife of Ross Bagdasarian Jr. But there still seems to be a piece missing from that puzzle...
It had been written before that the film's "associate producer" Sue Shakespeare, who had also worked on the '80s TV series, was brought in some time during production to "rescue" the film. None of Karman's recollections ever mentioned her, and I can only imagine when she entered the picture.
I'd guess it was a bit before Karman was getting animation studios from all over the world to contribute to getting the movie finished. The basic gist of CHIPMUNK ADVENTURE's behind-the-scenes struggle is pretty much Bagdasarian Jr. thinking that Karman was fit to direct an animated feature whose release date and promotional deals were locked in place, despite the latter having had no experience handling such a job. That stressed her the hell out. Not to mention, she was pregnant. The studio originally tasked to do the film's animation ultimately couldn't, story goes that many of them suffered hand injuries. When the two realized that the release date was looming and they had to make it no matter what, then they got several houses in different states and countries to do various scenes. Some Disney animators were even available following THE BLACK CAULDRON's flopping. (MOUSE DETECTIVE was in production in tandem with CAULDRON, and got out a year later, a year earlier than originally intended. That could explain why the likes of Glen Keane were freed up to do something else for a brief period of time.) So they got tons of people working around the clock to get stuff done... Whatever they could, that was. A lot got cut because of the time tables and the overall haphazard way the movie was pushed into production. What's more, both her and her husband were supposedly very antagonistic towards the animators.
And my quasi-educated guess is that Shakespeare, who is never mentioned by Karman in the interviews she had given over the years, was the person who helped them reach out to all the animation studios who said yes to helping pull the film to the finish line. Could you imagine that happening today? How much SCRUTINY that would get all across social media? We already know a massive chunk of online animation fans have a thing for slamming the panic button constantly, but something like this would send their brains into overdrive. Karman herself said that after the film premiered, she had only seen its flaws and wouldn't watch it again for about another 20 years.
Shakespeare also supposedly got ROVER DANGERFIELD to the finish line, the ill-fated second feature from Hyperion that was given an extremely muted release from Warner Bros. in the summer of 1991. Another very compromised animated movie of the era.
Then there was her attempt to help Richard Williams finish THE THIEF AND THE COBBLER, perhaps the grand champion of troubled animated movies... This was right around the time the rug had been pulled out from under the film, in May 1992. A small detail often left out of that one particular chapter of the film's gargantuan production history. The story often goes straight to the Miramax cut of the movie, ARABIAN KNIGHT, which opened in August 1995... But in-between, some stuff had happened, and Shakespeare had proposed to work with Williams and even bring in Terry Gilliam (of all people!) to finish THIEF AND THE COBBLER.
THE THIEF AND THE COBBLER was one of those films where a bond company was involved, to insure that the film would be finished on time and on budget. A fairly common practice for some films back then. The one in question, simply called The Completion Bond Company, said no to Shakespeare's idea. They instead gave the project to a TV animation veteran named Fred Calvert, who worked with multiple animation studios to make new segments for the drastically re-cut movie, the intent was to apparently finish the film as "quickly and cheaply as possible". Though I'd imagine making a bunch of new scenes cost a pretty penny, and it only prolonged things. Calvert's version of the movie was completed in mid-1993, and first got out in South Africa in September of that year. A Philippines release followed in April 1994, and then an Australian release some time in the late summer/early fall. (It's been written for YEARS that Australia got the movie the same day as South Africa, but Australian Classification gave the film its rating in June of 1994.) Miramax got the film in December, and re-cut and re-dubbed it even further. So, there are parts of the saga that do get brushed over.
I suspect it's a similar case with Shakespeare's involvement with THE CHIPMUNK ADVENTURE. That it was her work on that and ROVER DANGERFIELD that got her involved w/ THE THIEF AND THE COBBLER in the first place.
Feature animation was particularly wild in the late '80s and early '90s.
