If there’s one film that could be considered the black sheep of the Disney Animated Canon, it would be The Black Cauldron, the studio’s 25th animated feature. Released in 1985, The Black Cauldron is recognized as the antepenultimate film in what’s colloquially considered Disney’s “Dark Age” and is notable as not only the first film from the studio to receive a PG rating and feature CG, but also the most expensive animated film ever made at the time. Unfortunately, it was also a box office bomb, earning a mere $21.3 million compared to its $44 million budget, and nearly bankrupted the studio, as well as sideline any further attempts at adapting the source material, Lloyd Alexander’s The Chronicles of Prydain, for decades. On top of that, it didn’t get a proper home video release until 1998 entirely as a result of its failure.
In the years since, however, The Black Cauldron has developed a cult following due to the very elements that led to its initial failure at the box office. Disney themselves have even acknowledged its existence with a 4K Disney+ release in 2019, a 2021 Blu-ray release (though exclusively through the Disney Movie Club) and representation in the Disney Villainous tabletop game, as well as a small selection of merch for the 35th anniversary. This cult status also led us to finally check it out, as we sometimes do with other lesser-known Disney films. In this case, while it’s certainly not the best film the studio has ever released, it’s easier now to at least appreciate what they were going for at the time.
