When Walt Disney Pictures' The Emperor's New Groove bows December 15, alert moviegoers will notice only one name under the director credit a first for Disney animated fare since 1988's Oliver & Company, directed
by George Scribner. Mark Dindal is the solo director on this fantasy adventure.
But it didn't start that way. In 1996, when the project was in its second year of development under Lion King co-director Roger Allers, it was a sweeping dramatic epic with an ambitious score. The plot concerned an overwhelmed prince named Manco (Just Shoot Me's David Spade), who, a la Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper, switches identities with Pancha, a llama herder who happens to be his almost-identical twin. But when production bogged down, a search was initiated for a co-director, and Dindal, fresh off Turner Pictures' Cats Dont Dance, was brought in at first-time producer Randy Fullmer's recommendation.
"[Allers] had been working on it for several years, and the development just wasn't going as well as everyone had hoped." Dindal says. "It got down to the point where we needed to change our course and come up with another take on the movie altogether — at that time it was more of a serious drama with elements of comedy, but definitely more dramatic. Ultimately, we explored different paths, and [the powers that be] chose the one I was developing."
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