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Five years ago today, the world lost one of the greatest animators of all time - Richard Williams. Best known for directing the animation on "Who Framed Roge...
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In 2006, filmmaker and artist Garrett Gilchrist created a non-profit fan restoration of Williams's workprint, titled The Thief and the Cobbler: The Recobbled Cut. It was done in as high quality as possible by combining available sources at the time, including a video copy of Williams's workprint and a Japanese DVD release of Arabian Knight .
Oct 28, 2021 · In the case of The Thief and the Cobbler, the film was beyond average, with a troubled production that was far from typical and took nearly a lifetime to reach completion. Nearly 30 years in the ...
Jul 21, 2020 · Welcome to The Animation That Changed Me, a new series in which leading filmmakers and artists discuss one work of animation that has had a formative influence on their career. Our first guest is ...
- Production History
- Releases
- Arabian Knight Is Poorly Received by Critics
- Where's The Artwork?
- Early Restoration Attempts
- The Recobbled Cut
- So What's Next?
- Plot
- Voice Cast
Development and early production on Nasruddin
Richard Williams began development work on The Thief and the Cobblerin 1964, planning to do a film about the Mulla Nasruddin, a "wise fool" of Near Eastern folklore. Williams had previously illustrated a series of books by Idries Shah, which collected the philosophical yet humorously wise tales of Nasrudin. Production took place at Richard Williams Productions in Soho Square, London. An early reference to the project came in the 1968 International Film Guide, which noted that Williams was abo...
Nasruddin becomes The Thief and the Cobbler
The film went through many name-changes before becoming The Thief and the Cobbler - other names included "The Cobbler and the Thief," The Thief Who Never Gave Up' and Once... Idries Shah demanded 50% of the profits from the film, and Idries Shah’s sister, who had done some of the fine translations for the Nasrudin book, claimed that she owned the stories. Williams also felt that Omar Shah was stealing from the film's budget for his own purposes. As a result, Williams had a falling-out with th...
Prolonged production
Williams worked on the production as a side project in-between various television commercial, television special, and feature film title assignments, such as the 1977 feature Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure. Because he had no money or time to have a full team working on the film, and due to the film being a "giant epic", and because this was a learning project, production dragged for decades. In order to save money, scenes were kept in pencil stage without putting it into colour, as a...
After the film was taken from Richard Williams, it was turned into a Disney-type musical. The Miramax version has been said to resemble a plagiarism/rip-off of Aladdin. After the film's completion, Jake Eberts' Allied Filmmakers, along with Majestic Films, reacquired the distribution rights from the Completion Bond Company. Calvert's version of the...
Although the film's executive producer Jake Eberts found that "It was significantly enhanced and changed by Miramax after Miramax stepped in and acquired the domestic [distribution] rights," the Miramax version of the film was a commercial failure. Critical response to this version was negative. Film website Rotten Tomatoes, which compiles reviews ...
During the Fred Calvert/Completion Bond Company production of the film, much of the artwork from the film was thrown away. Other artwork fell into private hands. Before losing control of the film, Williams had originally kept all the film's artwork safe in a fireproof basement, as seen in the documentary I Drew Roger Rabbit. It is believed that Dis...
For years, low-quality video copies of Richard Williams' workprint have been shared among animation fans and professionals. At the 2000 Annecy Festival, Williams showed Walt Disney Feature Animation head Roy E. Disney a faded work print of The Thief, which Disney liked, and began a project to restore The Thief and the Cobbler to as close to William...
In 2006, a fan of Richard Williams' work named Garrett Gilchrist created a non-profit fan restoration of William's workprint, named The Thief and the Cobbler: The Recobbled Cut. It was done in as high quality as possible by combining available sources, such as a bootleg copy of Williams' workprint and better-quality footage from DVD and VHS copies ...
Currently, neither The Weinstein Company or Disney have any plans to restore the film. The 2006 Weinstein Company release of the film on DVD featured a pop-up packaging portraying Tack and Yumyum on a flying carpet, a scene which appears in Aladdin, not The Thief and the Cobbler, suggesting that the Weinstein Company is happy to portray The Thief a...
The Thief and the Cobbler
The film opens with the narrator describing a Golden City. According to a prophecy, if the three golden balls on the top of its highest minaret are taken away, the city will fall to destruction and death; however, the city can be saved by the "simplest soul with the smallest and simplest of things". The two titular characters, an unsuccessful but persistent thief, and Tack the poor and lonely cobbler, are both mute and have no dialogue. When the thief tries his luck at the home of Tack, Tack...
Changes made in The Princess and the Cobbler
The version by Fred Calvert is considerably different from Williams' workprint. Four songs have been added - the film originally had none. Many scenes have been cut: These include the thief attempting to steal various objects and a subplot where Zigzag tries to feed Tack to Phido. Also removed are any references to the "bountiful maiden from Mombassa", whom Zigzag gives to king Nod as "a plaything" in the workprint. Tack, who was (almost) mute in the original, speaks many times in the film an...
Changes made in Arabian Knight
The Miramax version includes all changes made in The Princess and the Cobbler, and adds the following: 1. Several previously mute characters were given voices, most notably the thief (as Tack explains in this version, the thief is "a man of few words, but many thoughts"). Other characters that have added voices are Phido and the alligators. 2. The Golden City is called Baghdad, though Tack is the only character who calls it that. 3. The Witch is the benevolent twin sister of the evil One-Eye....
Notes
In the original version of the film, the thief is heard making short grunts/wheezes in a few scenes - though not as many as in the Majestic Films version. It is unclear who provided these sounds, but it is known that Ed E. Carroll did the additional ones for the Majestic Films version. Although Sir Anthony Quayle's voice was mostly redubbed by Clive Revill in the re-edited versions of the film by Miramax and Majestic Films, Quayle's voice (uncredited) can still be heard for an entire scene wh...
Aug 20, 2019 · To be fair, “The Thief and the Cobbler” was the most extravagant project that Williams undertook. It was also, in many ways, the culmination of his training and imagination: the film’s first ten minutes of footage took 14 years to complete and cost about 1.5 million British pounds to produce (adjusting for inflation, that’s about $31 million today).
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The Thief and the Cobbler (also The Princess and the Cobbler, or Arabian Knight, depending on which version you're watching) is a legendary attempt by master animator Richard Williams to create the greatest animated feature ever. At 31 years, it holds the record for the longest production time for an animated motion picture— much of it spent ...
