As the Disney Renaissance reached its peak with 1994’s
The Lion King, other studios abruptly began to see that theatrical animation had become a viable blockbuster subgenre, capable of raking in millions of dollars. Many studios opened their own animation divisions, and executives at Warner Bros. Animation tried to start their journey toward animation riches with a big fantasy action-adventure musical:
Quest for Camelot.
But
Quest for Camelot became the first indication that perhaps the tried-and-true Disney formula wouldn’t last forever — and that other studios couldn’t achieve success just by copy-pasting it. While the creatives who worked on the project were passionate, mixed messages from executives — who chose marketing over storytelling — doomed the movie from the very beginning. But even though it earned poor box-office returns and got poor reviews, it meant something to kids who grew up with it, especially those who, for the first time, got to watch a young woman wield a sword and embark on a great adventure.