Jonah; a VeggieTales Movie (partially found deleted content of animated film; 2002)

Poster for the film.

Status: Partially Found

Jonah: a VeggieTales Movie is a 2002 computer-animated feature film based on the hit children's series VeggieTales, made by Big Idea Productions and distributed by Artisan Entertainment. It is a retelling of the biblical story of Jonah. It was The film premiered on August 14, 2002, arrived at local theaters on October 4, 2002, and made $25.6 million in the box office.^[1]

Deleted Content

Twisted Leafies

Originally, there was going to be a snack food on the ship of "The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything" called Mr. Twisty's Twisted Leafies. These would have been eaten by Khalil the Caterpillar (as a reference to caterpillars eating leaves). However, the ending was revamped (see below), which included a new element in the plot, Mr. Twisty's Cheese Curl Sweepstakes. To match up with the ending, the Twisted Leafies were replaced with Mr. Twisty's Twisted Cheese Curls. The majority of animation featuring the cheese curls at that point, however, still featured the Twisted Leafies logo. This was noticed near the end of production and was eventually changed to Twisted Cheese Curls. One shot near the end in the final release of the film still contains the Twisted Leafies logo. Info on this can be found in the Jonah audio commentary.

Original Ending

While writing the script, directors Phil Vischer and Mike Nawrocki noticed that the sailors in the first two chapters of Jonah mirrored the king and courts of Nineveh in the last two chapters. This caused them to cast Pa Grape as the king of Nineveh. However, this ending made absolutely no sense, as Pa Grape was already the captain of "The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything" at the beginning of the film. This caused the entire ending to be completely rewritten, re-casting a new character as the King of Nineveh, and adding new plot elements. Very few storyboards can be found of this ending.

Belly of the Whale - Phil Vischer Cut

Belly of the Whale is a song written by Steve Taylor and Peter Furler, and performed by the Christian rock band Newsboys, that plays in the credits of the film. While starting development on the song, Steve initially approached Phil Vischer to co-write the song, but he was too busy handling the film at the time. After a while, he sat down and wrote his own set of lyrics. By the time he sent them to Steve, however, the song had already been recorded. None of these alternate lyrics have ever surfaced.