Just before the weekend started, the animation space lit up when someone suddenly leaked a lot of never-before-seen internal material from Disney. We won’t link to it, but included in that material is a sizable amount of stuff from the company’s TV animation slate across its Disney Channel and Disney XD networks that goes as far back as the mid-2000s. Gravity Falls, Owl House, you name it: if it’s got a sizable fanbase (and isn’t a Marvel cartoon), then it’s probably featured here in some fashion.
Included in the leak were over 20 pilots, some of which were shows that’d been pitched, but ultimately never went anywhere. Similarly, there were also 40 show bibles—documents creators use to pitch their show, from the tone and characters to breakdowns for potential future seasons. Disney’s animated slate didn’t have quite the highs of Cartoon Network or even Nickelodeon, but what’s here may have you thinking about some shows you haven’t thought about in a while. (Case in point, they’ve got the bibles for Super Monkey Team HyperForce Go! and American Dragon: Jake Long in here, which may take you waaaaaaaay back.)
Setting aside how surprising it is that all this got leaked—and what’s more, whoever did it hasn’t stated why or who they are—what’s out there is admittedly interesting to go through. Fans of particular shows are going to get a lot out of those pilots and bibles, if only to see how these series evolved over time, particularly in terms of their art style. Even more interesting is to see what episodes these creators were pitching: in Gravity Falls’ case, most of these weren’t made, but you can see how parts of them—like Dipper getting into a golf war with Lil’ Gideon—were retooled into actual episodes.
For the creatively inclined, the show bibles are probably going to be the most worthwhile things to sift through. In reading through some of these, they’re quite extensive and can be a good guide to help you figure out how TV works, or even do a similar bible of your own for whatever you’re making. The Ducktales bible, for example, devotes multiple pages to each principle character’s interests, special skills, and core relationships with each other…along with how they’d react to a mummy.
Again, various websites and Twitters have gone through this stuff and put it out there for you to watch or read—and if you like any of these shows, or just animation in general, it’d be worth searching for. io9’s reached out to Disney for comment on the leak, and will update when a response is given.
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