Development and early production as Nasrudin (1964–1972) In 1964, Richard Williams, a Canadian animator living in the United Kingdom, was running an animation studio assigned to animate commercials and special sequences for live-action films. Williams illustrated a series of books by
Idries Shah, Older character designs, and characters that were later removed, are in the
Once... logo. In 1973, Williams commissioned a new script from Howard Blake, who wrote a treatment called
Tin Tack that incorporated a character who is a clumsy cobbler named Tack, and retained Williams's thief character from
Nasrudin. The script would later be scrapped, but the character of Tack would be incorporated in another script written by Margaret French, which would use characters from
Nasrudin, including a sleepy king, a thief and an evil vizier originally named Anwar. Many scenes that did not include Nasrudin himself were also retained. Price was hired to make the villain more enjoyable for Williams, as he was a great fan of Price's work and Zigzag was based on two people whom Williams hated. In addition to Price, Sir Anthony Quayle was cast as King Nod. The characters were renamed at this point. Zigzag speaks mostly in rhyme throughout the entire film, while the other characters—with the exceptions of the Thief and Tack, who are mute—speak normally. Williams stated that he did not intend to follow "the Disney route" with his film, saying that it would be "the first animated film with a real plot that locks together like a detective story at the end". He also said that with its two mute main characters, it was essentially "a silent movie with a lot of sound". During the decades that the film was being made, the characters were redesigned several times and scenes were reanimated.
Prolonged production (1973–1986) In late 1973, financial difficulties forced the studio to focus primarily on various TV commercial, special and feature film title assignments, leaving Williams's film to be worked on as a side project. Since Williams had no money to have a full team working on the film, which was a "giant epic", production dragged for decades. Williams was planning to later finish these sequences when the financing would come in. Upon seeing Disney's
The Jungle Book, Williams learned also from
Milt Kahl,
Frank Thomas,
Ollie Johnston, and
Ken Anderson at Disney, to whom he made yearly visits and would later pass their knowledge to the new generation of animators. Williams also allowed animators like Natwick and Babbitt to work on the studio assignments, such as the 1977 feature
Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure. The Mad Holy Old Witch was designed as a caricature of animator
Grim Natwick, by whom she was animated. After Natwick died, Williams would animate the Witch himself. As years passed, the project became more ambitious. Williams said that his idea was "to make the best animated film that has ever been made—there really is no reason why not". In 1978, Saudi Arabian prince
Mohammed bin Faisal Al Saud became interested in
The Thief, and agreed to fund a ten-minute test sequence with a budget of $100,000. Williams chose the complex, penultimate sequence of the Thief in the War Machine for the test. The studio missed two deadlines, and the scene was completed in late 1979 for $250,000. Despite his positive impression of the finished scene,
Star Wars producer
Gary Kurtz briefly worked with Williams to attempt to get financing in the mid-1980s. In 1986, Williams met producer
Jake Eberts, who began funding the production through his
Allied Filmmakers company and eventually provided US$10 million of the film's $28 million budget. Allied's distribution and sales partner Majestic Films began promoting the film in industry trades under the working title
Once.... At this time, Eberts encouraged Williams to make changes to the script. A subplot involving the characters of Princess Mee-Mee, Yum-Yum's identical
twin sister voiced by Catherine Schell, and the Prince Bubba, who had been turned into an
ogre and was voiced by Thick Wilson, was deleted, and some animation of the Witch had to be discarded. Also deleted was Ken Harris's sequence of a Brigand dreaming of a Biblical temptress. This plan did not come to pass. Disney began to put their attention more in their own feature animation, while Spielberg instead opened
Amblimation, a rival feature animation studio in London. Following his success, Williams and
Warner Bros. negotiated a funding and a distribution deal for
The Thief and the Cobbler, which included a $25 million marketing budget. Williams's current wife Imogen Sutton suggested him to finance
Thief with European backers, citing his appreciation of foreign films. Richard insisted he could produce the film with a major studio. Williams and Warner Bros. signed a
negative pickup deal in late 1988, and Williams also received financial aid from Japanese investors.
Production under Warner Bros. (1989–1992) to move in three dimensions without
CGI. The scene exists only in Williams's original, unfinished version, and was cut along with many others in the two released versions. With the new funding, the film finally went into full production in 1989. Williams scoured for talented artists around the world. At this point, with almost all the original animators either deceased or having long since moved on to other projects, production began mostly with a new, younger team of animators, including Richard's own son
Alexander Williams. In a 1988 interview with
Jerry Beck, Williams stated that he had two and a half hours of pencil tests for
Thief, and had not
storyboarded the film since he found such a method to be too controlling. Warner Bros. had signed a deal with
the Completion Bond Company to ensure that the studio would be given a finished film, otherwise they would finish
The Thief under their management. Dedicated but pressured, Williams was taking his time to ensure sequences would look perfect. Animators were working overtime, sometimes with sixty hours a week required, to get the film done. While Williams encouraged the best out of people, discipline was harsh and animators were frequently fired. Funders pressured Williams to make finished scenes of the main characters for a marketing trailer. The final designs were made for the characters at this time. Test animation of Princess Yum-Yum, as featured in the released versions, was
traced from the live-action film
Muqaddar Ka Sikandar (using a scene with actress
Rekha), with her design slightly changed later on in production. The animation department at Warner Bros. had put their enthusiasm towards high-quality television animation, but had little confidence towards backing feature animation. The studio had already released
The Nutcracker Prince, a Canadian-produced animated feature, in 1990 to almost no promotion.
Jean MacCurdy, Warner Bros.' then-head of animation, did not know anything about animation, as she admitted to an artist who had worked for Williams while she was seeing footage of
The Thief. Meanwhile,
Walt Disney Feature Animation had begun work on
Aladdin, a film that bore striking resemblances in story, style and character to
The Thief and the Cobbler; for example, the character Zigzag from
Thief shares many physical characteristics with both
Aladdin villain
Jafar, and its
Genie, as animated by Williams Studio alumnus
Andreas Deja and
Eric Goldberg. The Completion Bond Company asked television animation producer Fred Calvert to report on the state of production in detail. Fans have cited this decision as an example of a trend of animated films being tampered with by studio executives.
Production under Fred Calvert (1992–1993) Sue Shakespeare of
Creative Capers Entertainment had previously offered to solve story problems with Richard Williams, suggested bringing in
Terry Gilliam to consult, and proposed to allow Williams to finish the film under her supervision. Williams reportedly agreed to Shakespeare's proposal, but her bid was ultimately rejected by the Completion Bond Company in favor of a cheaper one by Fred Calvert, whom the company had assigned to finish the film as cheaply and quickly as possible. Calvert said: "I really didn't want to do it, but if I didn't do it, it would have been given off to the lowest bidder. I took it as a way to try and preserve something and at least get the thing on the screen and let it be seen". In December 1994, the North American rights to the film were bought by
Miramax Films, then a subsidiary of
Disney (which had already released
Aladdin first), after it had already been rejected by several other American distributors. Calvert recalls: "It was a very difficult film to market, it had such a reputation, that I don't think they were looking at it objectively". Instead of releasing Calvert's cut as it was, Miramax decided to change the film even further and released their version entitled
Arabian Knight. and grossed US$319,723 (on an estimated budget of $24 million) during its theatrical run. == Home media ==