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, and is a retelling of the biblical story of Jonah. It was made by BigIdea, and distributed by Artisan. 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've 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, 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. It is currently unknown how much animation contained this logo. Info on this can be found in the Jonah audio commentary.

Original Ending

While writing the script, BigIdea 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 BigIdea 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.