The Thief and the Cobbler

Three golden balls sit atop the Golden City. Remove them and the city falls. A thief steals them, a silent cobbler and a princess set out to recover them, and the grand vizier ZigZag negotiates with the approaching army. Richard Williams directs. The real story is not on screen. It is in the making. Williams began in 1964 and worked on the film for close to thirty years, which makes it the longest production in animation history. The standing he earned as animation director on Who Framed Roger Rabbit finally brought him a studio deal, but he missed the delivery date, and in 1992 the completion bond company seized the film. Fred Calvert was brought in to finish it cheaply and songs were added. Miramax cut it again in 1995 as Arabian Knight. The film Williams designed has never been shown. ZigZag is voiced by Vincent Price, recorded across the late sixties and early seventies. Price died in 1993. Ken Harris, the great Warner Brothers animator, animated the Thief's sequences while in his eighties. Who it is for: anyone interested in the history of animation, in what hand drawn work can do, and in unfinished masterpieces. Who it is not for: the versions in circulation are not Williams's film. The story is broken, the songs were bolted on, and as a whole it does not work.