I've complained in the past that pop-culture alternate history so often just descends into an excuse for 80s nostalgia and geek fanboy wish fulfilment. So without further ado, I'd like to bring to the table an idea I've obsessed over about the different direction Disney might have taken in the 1970s and 1980s.
As chronicled in
this article, the time between the death of Walt Disney and the second wind they received in the early 1990s following such hits as
The Little Mermaid,
Beauty and the Beast,
Aladdin, and
The Lion King, were the worst doldrums the company had ever known. Though animated films like
Robin Hood and
The Rescuers were still big hits for the company in the 1970s, overall success was tempered by the lukewarm response to live-action films like
Bedknobs & Broomsticks (why anyone would
not want to see Bruce Forsyth as a murderous spiv is beyond me). At the same time, the US film industry as a whole was going through something of a transformation with the rise of blockbusters such as
Jaws and
Star Wars. Disney, like every other Hollywood studio, had turned down George Lucas's space fantasy inspired by a hundred and one previous works.
It was in this climate Ron Miller became President of the corporation in 1978, a producer and former Los Angeles Rams player, and Walt Disney's son-in-law. He wanted to take the name in bold new directions inspired by the changes in Hollywood during the decade - he wanted to make adult films at Disney. This scandalous notion brought him into frequent conflict with other executives, including his predecessor as President and current CEO Card Walker. The first film in this controversial new direction was
The Black Hole, a much darker science fiction adventure than the one they had turned down from Lucas a few years previously. The fact it was Disney's first film rated PG convinced many moral guardians that it would be hardcore pornography... with swearing! Instead we were treated to robots that were actually human corpses, Tony Perkins being shredded by a big red machine, and a literal trip to Hell at the end - all to a wonderful John Barry score. These experiments would continue well into the 1980s with such films as
The Watcher in the Woods,
Dragonslayer,
Tron,
Something Wicked This Way Comes,
Black Cauldron, and
Return to Oz. Of course, the more things change, the more they stayed the same, and after Ron Miller was ousted by a cabal of executives in 1984, including Michael Eisner, Disney would return to form in more ways than one with a double punch of hits in 1989 with the animated
The Little Mermaid and the live-action
Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.
What if Miller's experiments had yielded better results and convinced the executives of a complete change in direction from the late 1970s onward? Maybe the easiest way would be to go back and have Disney accept
Star Wars from George Lucas? For this to happen we would probably need Miller to become President earlier; when Card Walker became CEO in 1976 he kept the post of President for another year. What if CEO at the time Lucas was turned away, Donn Tatum, had call to step down - a health scare say. Walker would still be likely to take over from him, and Miller, one of the last members of the Disney family in a high-ranking position, would still most likely replace Walker as President. Perhaps he would be more receptive to the idea of
Star Wars and would purchase the idea before Alan Ladd, Jr. at Fox could say yes.
How would
Star Wars have turned out under Disney? Lucas has said OTL that "This is a Disney movie." The troubled production gave a lot of people at Fox worry, but Lucas had a real champion in Ladd. Miller might have acted in the same role at Disney. Presuming we end up with a broadly similar shooting script (itself not a guarantee), might production be kept in Southern California than in Tunisia and the United Kingdom? How about casting? Kurt Russell auditioned for the role of Han Solo and had a long history at Disney; and Jodie Foster turned down the role of Princess Leia because she was under contract to Disney at the time. One certainty is that Lucas might not be able to wrangle the merchandising rights from Disney, who would hope to recoup some losses if the film failed through the use of its props and costumes and ideas at their theme parks.
What of the direction of Disney? Would Miller's ideas be seen as vindicated by the success of
Star Wars? If so, would he not be forced out in 1984 and Disney's experimental phase never end? By the turn of the millennium might they be better known for their live action fantasy and science fiction films than their animated efforts? What of Pixar? OTL it started out as the graphics division of Lucasfilm spun out into its own company in 1986; would it be an in-house Disney company much earlier? Another film Disney turned down during it's experimental phase was
Back to the Future, every other studio in Hollywood turned it down for being too light but they turned it down for being too risqué; might it find a home at a Disney taking bold new directions under Ron Miller?