Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas

Directed by Tim Johnson with Patrick Gilmore, the film lifts Sinbad out of Arab storytelling into a Greek setting: the course runs to Syracuse and the opposition is Eris, goddess of discord. Screenwriter John Logan says he read many versions before settling on the Greek and Roman strands, and found his first draft too heavy for its target audience. Russell Crowe was set to voice Sinbad and left over scheduling, which brought in Brad Pitt. Pitt worried his Missouri accent would not suit the character; the filmmakers told him it would lighten the tone. Michelle Pfeiffer struggled to fix Eris and recalls phoning Katzenberg after a third rewrite to say he really could fire her. It was the first feature the studio produced entirely on Linux, on more than 250 workstations, and the water came out too photorealistic before being pulled back towards the development paintings. Made for $60 million, it took $80.7 million worldwide. It remains the last DreamWorks Animation feature drawn by hand, and Katzenberg said afterwards that traditional stories told in traditional animation were probably past. A good fit if you want to watch hand drawn characters share the frame with computer built seas and monsters. Not for viewers expecting Sinbad in the geography of the Arabian Nights.