Watch A Teaser For Disney’s Unmade ‘Haunted Mansion’ Series By ‘Kubo’ Creator Shannon Tindle
Over the weekend, Kubo and the Two Strings creator Shannon Tindle shared a little treat on Twitter: a teaser for a Haunted Mansion animation project that he had developed at Disney.
Alas, the teaser was as far as the idea went, since Disney never moved forward with the idea:
The project was developed last year with a small group of people as part of Tindle’s overall development deal with Disney Television Animation (DTVA). Tindle wrote pilots for two different versions of a possible Haunted Mansion animated series: one of which would be an ongoing series and the other a limited series.
“My goal was to take inspiration from all the backstories created by the artists at WED [the name of Disney’s Imagineering division] and stitch it into one, giant narrative,” Tindle tells Cartoon Brew. “The story would span several years and focus on different characters, but add up to one big, interconnected story.”
Tonally, the series would have had “a lot of fun and silly elements to it,” he explains, but it would be contained within a larger story in which viewers entered the show through the eyes of a character struggling with grief over a recently-lost loved one. “I love playing with tone,” Tindle says, “and animation (particularly a property that has ghosts as part of its DNA) is particularly good at weaving broad fun with deeply emotional stories.”
While it currently seems unlikely that Disney will produce the project, Tindle’s teaser received a strongly enthusiastic reaction after he posted it on Twitter. As for Tindle himself, he remains enthused, too. “I’d still love to jump back in and make this thing!”
Below are a couple of ghost designs that Tindle created during the development of the project:
A couple of Hitchhiking ghosts I designed for that little thing I was developing. #hauntedmansion pic.twitter.com/hOdKLJn6Qo
— Shannon Tindle (@ShannonTindle_1) January 1, 2018
Haunted Mansion Teaser Credits
Voice: Marsai Martain
Backgrounds: Sunmin Inn
Animation: Matt Williames
Motion Graphics: Daniel Hashimoto
Character Design: Shannon Tindle
Character Color Styling: Rachelle Reyes
