Trailer
Plot summary
Dallben the enchanter keeps a pig named Hen Wen at Caer Dallben, and her visions tell him that the Horned King, a tyrant of skeletal appearance, wants the Black Cauldron, a relic able to raise an invincible army of undead warriors. Taran, Dallben's teenage assistant pig-keeper, dreams of becoming a warrior and is told to lead Hen Wen to safety, but winged Gwythaints snatch the pig and carry her toward the Horned King's castle. Taran goes after her, meeting a forest creature called Gurgi, who wants his friendship, and Princess Eilonwy and the bard Fflewddur Fflam, held prisoner in the castle.
Cast
- Lindsay Richas Fairfolk (voice)
- Gregory Levinsonas Fairfolk (voice)
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Black Cauldron (1985)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Disney officially budgeted the film at $25 million, but production manager Don Hahn later revealed in his documentary Waking Sleeping Beauty that it actually cost $44 million, the most of any animated film at the time, earning it the nickname "the film that almost killed Disney."
- When producer Joe Hale objected to Jeffrey Katzenberg's demands - animated films were then edited in storyboard form on Leica reels - Katzenberg responded by having the film brought into an edit bay and editing the film himself.
- The film's original Christmas 1984 release was delayed after a test screening found several scenes, particularly in the climax, disturbing to children, and the newly appointed Walt Disney Studios chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg ordered them cut.
- Gary Burghoff of M*A*S*H fame auditioned as Gurgi and tried numerous vocal iterations, because Ted Berman had no idea how the character should sound. After three hours the directors grew frustrated and Burghoff, who had refused to leave, was thrown out of the studio.
- The Black Cauldron was Disney's first animated feature to use computer-generated imagery, for bubbles, a boat, a floating orb of light and the cauldron itself, after producer Joe Hale heard what the crew of The Great Mouse Detective was doing and had them create some computer animation for his film.
- In January 1981 Hayley Mills said she was being considered for the voice of Eilonwy and met Hale and the directors to discuss the part, but the role went to Susan Sheridan, who recorded her lines on three separate trips to the Disney studios.
- The animation photo transfer process, invented by David W. Spencer of the studio's still camera department, was first used on The Black Cauldron to get the rough animation onto celluloid, after being tested in a few scenes of The Fox and the Hound.
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