The CANCELLED DreamWorks Masterpiece...

hello and welcome to another episode of the canceled series because nothing bolsters an existential crisis quite like imagining a world of what could have been and while in the past we've covered all sorts of pixar and disney video games and sony we've only really touched on dreamworks once and i think it's worth doing it again though actually i didn't come up with this myself this was suggested on our discord by woodsy and ryan120 so thank you to youtube honestly it's pretty rare getting a suggestion for something that isn't the terrible series so if you want to get an edge on getting picked then maybe consider more of the other series still yes today we're tackling one of the most popular cancelled projects by dreamworks and really i'm surprised i haven't heard of it myself but what makes it so special why is it so popular how was it going to turn out and what went wrong come join us today as we revisit an alternative timeline of a dreamworks artistic masterpiece or two so this film is called me and my shadow it's a real peter pan story without the peter pan part i mean it's just that one character dynamic the production was first announced back on december 10 2010 and the part that really hooked people was the artistic concept heralding the entire thing you see this wasn't just a standard animated movie with a cool plotline or anything this was an industry shaking idea of blending together the at the time transitional crisis of the animation industry together you may remember the princess and the frog film back in 2009 or sinbad in 2003 those were 2d the last of disney's and dreamworks is animated movies before well you've seen the state of animation now and though we clearly now know where things went whether people like it or not the fact remains that this film was intended to still hold on to the 2d ideals in a more collaborative way as it would have fully blended cgi animation alongside hand drawn animation by the simple to think of yet complex to execute idea of a man's shadow interacting with his 3d self honestly i can understand the hype behind such a concept that's a great pitch and would turn some heads if not just from the fact that dreamworks hasn't done a 2d film since the likes of sinbad way back in 2003. so with us starting on the cusp of the decade the release window for the film was set for march 2013 and things were going fairly standardly people started getting signed onto roles such as bill hader before he got all involved in inside out or bob's burger or all the other things he's been in cast as the shadow there was also kate hudson as the romantic interest before she was on glee and then there was josh gad as the protagonist believe it or not he did exist before his olaf role and as for director the slot was given to mark dindale who not only also developed the film's concept and story but previously worked on chicken little and the emperor's new groove and later uh according to imdb he does the occasional story artist work now i guess so with the soon-to-be big names on board where was the script going well it was slated to go a little something like this stanley grubb is an ordinary human who works an everyday job and is overall a bit of a dull dude very timid shy and not really bold on tackling adventures or breaking the rules and his shadow wants to help him by breaking the rules of the once secret shadow world when a crime in the shadow world puts both of their lives in danger shadow stan is forced to take control of stanley they go on a massive adventure to investigate the crime and stop a shadow villain from leading a rebellion that would lead to shadows taking over their human counterparts in the human world and by the end of the film presumably stanley would have grown some confidence as well also he had a love interest named heidi this goes on a bit of a tangent but i'm still on board imagining owl city performing underneath is a tad strange but that's a confirmed thing too having a whole realm of the shadows isn't exactly how i would have anticipated such a premise but it would have allowed for a lot of creative imagery as is having a 2d character move across a 3d plane which is interesting enough but from some of the footage that remains of the film there were plans to get far more inventive with the spacing of these two dimensional characters as well as how they interact with light the more you try to break down the possibilities of what a shot can do in this world the more investing this project sounds no wonder all sorts of people were hyped and even the staff were the most vocal of the bunch there come in the form of matt williams a veteran animator who prior to this worked on the princess and the frog coraline the spongebob movie looney tunes back in action and later claws and space jam 2. he's gone on to say about the project that it featured definitely the most talented animators i have ever worked with in my career it was great a small crew where we were all given a certain level of freedom i was going to be the lead on the villain of the film but sadly it was cancelled before i could start my first shot that villain by the way was rumored to be tom hiddleston just scratching the surface of his time as loki but i don't think that was ever confirmed of course while most of the film exists only in our imagination there are scattered throughout the realms of the internet a handful of test clips that can help stitch together the vision of the film at varying stages of development you've probably seen a handful already i gotta be cautious because they come with copy strikes sometimes but even still i might have learned about this film a little late since the go-to thread on twitter has been mostly taken down at this point but i'll do what i can to dig up the rest if it's possible but you can see some clear ideas in places with shadow stan looking to be a new take on the genie with his transfigurative properties as well as 2d techniques and approaches that predict some of the stuff we would see in later movies though actually it's been interesting to see the more i dig up footage like sure the shadow changes that one time but a lot of other clips he remains more on model just stretched all the time or look at this clip where he's in the shadow realm and gets split in half because of stanley in the real world where he's not even seen that's cool i guess happening when no shadows are cast at all as some clips show stanley can hide his shadow by turning off lights also there's all sorts of imagery relating to the town and a motif of light bulbs which is obviously the perfect location and idea for this kind of film's premise and part of the technologies that were planned for this ambitious project was to project this 2d animation onto a distorted 3d space to distort along the new walls and angles like they do in real life which is great i particularly like seeing the struggle between stanley and his shadow with the lamp projecting the lighting in different directions or how the logic of this world is that the shadow can manipulate their real world counterpart as we see in multiple renderings across this art and footage it's just a cool idea even a short would suffice for me honestly as a brief other thing that did confuse me in a couple places these characters have multiple names on the internet sometimes referred to as stanley and stan other times as daniel and shadow dan either someone said something wrong once and it got repeated or changes were made over time figured i'd throw that out there in case i've been labeling them wrong still the only other element to directly comment on is all this art there are characters we'll never see both in 2d and 3 or more characteristics for the ones we faintly know about here's the big shadow monster baddie that stan warns about in one clip and hey this artwork got its direct adaptation in animated form also if you're liking my stuff so far do consider subscribing here's our schedule for absolutely everything we're doing along with all of our links or just click on hashtag reviews beneath this video and hang around to the end of the video for a hint on what's next but of course things went downhill somewhere and the real ruptures started two years later in 2012. and it started off i guess with what you could call a rival project within dreamworks mr peabody and sherman now this is a film i remember being advertised while there was no direct bad blood between the two projects they were both in development at the same time around this time line recordings had started as there's several star photographs and confirmation that josh gad had recorded his first lines of dialogue on february 16 2012 and when it was time to pitch both projects to dreamworks executives they were much more in favor of the peabody project as a potentially successful film in fact in 2012 dreamworks co-founder jeffrey katzenberg was shown a special screening of me and my shadow and stated that it just was not the 200 million dollar movie he had wanted so with the head honcho's opinion solidified the release for peabody and shadows was swapped so that peabody's was to come out first now me and my shadow was now delayed to march 2014 the first delay of many and further to that injury dindal as director was replaced by alessandro carloni whose work prior included just the shark and the piano short as a director but sinbad shark tale over the hedge and kung fu panda and how to trade your dragon as an animator story artist and supervisor so just a general dreamworks veteran and post this project will continue on to the future big dreamworks projects and kung fu panda 3 as director not gonna watch that whole series one day still delays only continued further as peabody and sherman wasn't doing too hot being behind on production which delayed them onto me and my shadow's new slot of march 2014 and then it released unsuccessfully dreamworks as a whole was suffering at this point and so as is the story we keep coming back to dreamworks underwent some corporate restructuring in 2015 shutting down an entire studio redwood studio city and laying off 500 employees too so while in 2013 the initial delays had jeffrey katzenberg clarify that me in my shadows was not cancelled and simply put back on its development track this time around jeffrey himself stepped down and the project was officially cancelled he said it he said it but not for long an attempt to revive the idea came about also in 2015 and with a new big name attached to it master of woe announcing imagery edgar wright popped up potentially making his directorial debut for an animated movie just from seeing the stuff he gets up to in live action you can just imagine the antics possible in animated form or maybe you can't fathom the idea at all my mind's eye isn't really good enough for this thing personally still the project was back in a whole new form things were being vastly redone as edgar wright had been signed on to rework the concept into a new story it was described as being a new take on a previously developed concept about shadows and the title me in my shadow was renamed to just shadows maybe it wouldn't have been such a me and him tale anymore the reason i'm so unaware of the details is because while wright was busy working and even produced three drafts of the movie as he claimed in an interview we never got to see it because by now it was 2017 and this film can only exist for two years at a time apparently as dreamworks is now to be hit by a massive buyout by comcast thus more corporate reshuffling was in order as the goal was now to somehow incorporate nbc universal and everything else that comes with this kind of business direction and of course with such a small unproduced project like shadows being amidst the carnage it was quietly cancelled and never heard from again and yet here we are talking about it today because it is one of the most popular unfinished films in the animation industry and as we said earlier it garnered a cult following despite not even technically existing i mean every animation studio has some sort of cancelled project under their rug i mean the big ones of course being pixar's newt sony's popeye and studio ghibli's porca rosso sequel which i'm sure will cover those other two at least some point in the series and also dreamworks alone has plenty of unproduced projects but this one stands out for some reason maybe it's because of the demand for old school 2d animation to return by some die-hard animation fans maybe it's because of the intriguing concept of blending 2d and 3d animation together like this or maybe it's because of some of the potentially groundbreaking techniques being introduced with some of the ideas being pushed for it whatever the case dreamworks has long since changed since the inception of this project undergoing two corporate shuffles changes the company and we'll likely never see a world where this film sees the light of day as is usually the story of these cancer projects of course if sony can revive their animated popeye then there's always a chance dreamworks could do the same with their most popular unfinished ip but i guess we'll just have to see after all a holy original film from the guys isn't the most common thing in the world these days as is the state of the industry as a whole but let's not grovel in the shadows any longer if you have any suggestions for which cancer project you want us to talk about next let us know on our discord come check out my other links if you want to support our extra content my name's been daz you didn't really care next week we're covering a terrible live-action movie from a company that is notorious for bad live actions and i'll see you in a bit you

Channel: DazzReviews

Views: 2,146,155

Rating: 4.9689713 out of 5

Keywords: dazzreviews, discussion, video essay, CANCELLED movies, cancelled, dazzreviews cancelled, me and my shadow, me & my shadow, shadows, dreamworks, dreamworks animation, dreamworks shadows, dreamworks shadow, dreamworks me and my shadow, dreamworks me & my shadow, josh gad, bill hader, edgar wright, edgar wright shadows, cancelled dreamworks, cancelled shadows, cancelled me and my shadow, cancelled me & my shadow, dazzreviews cancelled me and my shadow, tom hiddleston

Id: VKPMI95lROo

Length: 12min 25sec (745 seconds)

Published: Fri May 21 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Random_hootowl000]

Omg so i wasnt the only one going crazy when this popped up in my recommended

[u/mazentaem]

the saddest thing in my life 😕😕😕😔😔😔

[u/ABeautiful_Soul]

Hey its dazz. I watch that guy.

[u/mazentaem]

life is not fair😔😔

[u/mazentaem]

It would have been the best movie ever😔

[u/-Chinchillax-]

I am now lamenting something that does not exist :(

[u/FloppyFluffyEars]

Hey, is Zac Snyder's crew got their movie out maybe we should give it a shot.

[u/TheSalamanderKing21]

I remember when Dazz made Pikmin videos. The good ol days.