Will a Movie Ever Be Made About the Life and Career of Walt Disney?

With a More Detailed Biography Released Last Year by Neal Gabler--a Movie About the Entertainment World's Greatest Ever Practitioner Could Be a Fascinating and Complex Portrait

The Walt Disney Company has obviously avoided making a movie about their founder for decades now for these probable reasons: It just would be far too complex and dramatic than they want the audience impression to take away from the legend of Walt Disney. The idea is that the created persona of Walt at least eight generations have taken to heart is too strong now and appealing to have him take form as a real, complex human being who makes for a great psychological and business study. No doubt some screenplays have been shopped around in Hollywood since his death in 1966 to attempt to put Walt Disney's incredibly full life into a reasonable-length film. Many of those may have been based on earlier biographies that have always been considered more in tune to what the Disney Company want (i.e. Bob Thomas's classic biography of the mid 1970's that Walt himself supposedly cooperated on ten years earlier). No doubt some attempts were made to make movies based on those other notorious biographies written that depicted Walt Disney as a tyrant, racist and several other negative traits. All of those extreme faults were more or less debunked by people who knew him much better than the biographers.

Late last year, Neal Gabler released a massive, balanced (and some say too detailed) 800-page biography on Walt's life that's now considered one of the best biographies ever done on the man. It's the first one to paint him as a lonely, angst-ridden genius who managed to rise above his problems and change family entertainment forever. It might be the best template to use if a movie finally does get a green light--wishfully independently rather than from the Disney Company itself. But just how would a screenplay manage to play out if a movie was made depicting Walt's life? He had enough dramatic and complex events in his life to make just about any other biopic ever made about others pale in comparison due to the variety of emotions and situations...



The first quarter of the film: Walt's early struggles with finding a direction in his life--and having his first cartoon character taken away from him...