American Dog (partially found original version of "Bolt" Disney animated film; 2007-2008)

Original title treatment.

Status: Partially Found

American Dog was a Disney animated film written and directed by Chris Sanders (who also directed and written Disney's 2002 animated feature film Lilo & Stitch), that was due to be released in 2007. However, due to production issues and Sanders reportedly refusing to listen to the advice given by Disney executives on how to fix the film, he left the film's production and the film's concepts later became realized in Disney's 2008 animated feature film Bolt.

Plot

The protagonist of the film was a canine actor, Henry, who stars in his own show where he's a secret agent. Sanders described the plot as follows:

"Henry, a famous TV dog, finds himself stranded in the Nevada desert. Out in the world for the first time, Henry's tidy life of scripted triumph has come to an end, and his 2,000 mile trek through the real world is just beginning."

Henry would run into a giant, radioactive rabbit (named Mr. Buttons in the filename of a piece of concept art) and a cat with an eyepatch (named Spig in a piece of concept art) who had access to a classic car. He would con them into helping him get back home all the while learning how to interact with normal people and live without being served on hand and foot. John Travolta, Thomas Haden Chruch, and Mario Cantone were rumored to be the voices for the trio. According to animator Daniel Chong, the cat and rabbit would have lived in a gas station where they kept retirement savings in a giant dinosaur statue. According to artist Mike Gabriel in the book, They Drew As They Pleased: The Hidden Art of Disney's New Golden Age, during his travels Henry would come across 'The Lady In Black,' a circus performer from the 1930s who had done a fire act with a gorilla. She was now holed up in a mansion in the swamps of Georgia. A mutant girl scout named Ruth (or Ruthie) would have stalked the cat and rabbit at night. A sexy Vegas waitress named Jo Night was also part of the film in some way. According to an interview with Chirs Sanders, Henry was bought at a kennel and grew up working on movie sets, so its all he knows. Then when filming was finished, he would be put in a dark room and his life would be on hold until the filming of the next episode. Once Henry gets loose in the real world, it seems the same to him, just without someone yelling "cut" or "action" and appears to be a bit duller. Because of this, Henry has "bravery born of ignorance", he is driven to do things, but doesn't actually know how to do them. For example Henry would go behind the wheel of a car, but can't actually drive, so a comedic scene of his awful driving skills causing a horrible situation could potentially occur (and thus why he needs the help of the cat and the rabbit).

Availability

Ultimately, the film was considered too surreal and "too bold" by the executives at Disney. Sanders got kicked off the project in late 2006 and replaced by Chris Williams and Byron Howard, spurring Sanders to leave Disney entirely and later join DreamWorks Animation. According to the book Creativity Inc.: overcoming the unseen forces that stand in the way of true inspiration, one of the largest plot elements that caused the reworking of the film was Ruthie. "...somewhere along the way, the plot had also come to include a radioactive, cookie-selling Girl Scout zombie serial killer. I'm all for quirky ideas, but this one had metastasized...which while we prided ourselves on always remaining open to new ideas-seemed a tad dark for a family film. Despite our misgivings, though, we decided to give the movie a chance to evolve. Finding a movie's throughline always takes time, we told ourselves. But after ten months of Story Trust meetings-and very little improvement we concluded that the only option was to restart the project." Another issue was trying to rationalize Henry's actions.

Chris Sanders: It had a lot to do with rationalizing what this dog was. 'Can he drive a car or can he not?” The answer was yes and no. He can make the car go but, no, he can’t drive. And that would become a big sticking point. In my mind, that idea wasn’t that weird, it was pretty simple; in other people’s minds at the studio, it wasn’t making any sense.

In an interview with Slashfilm, John Lasseter also mentioned a lack of suspension of belief with the characters:

/Film: Oh definitely. What do you think the biggest change was in the direction that you took "Bolt" from what Sanders was doing to what it is today?

John Lasseter: Well I think part of it was focusing on the believability of this dog, and we could set it up so the audience can understand how this dog could believe that this is all real. And so there's a little focus on kind of making the animals in the film feel a little bit more like real animals

The film was soon re-written and became Bolt, which was released in 2008. Several of the animators from American Dog moved on to the Bolt production. In honor of American Dog, Sanders reused the eyepatch-wearing cat (who would become the character Mittens in the final film) as well as the rabbit in his webcomic, Kiskaloo.

Still, very little production material and artwork of American Dog has been released or leaked to the public and all that is known to currently exist of Bolt's original incarnation is test footage of the film shown at SIGGRAPH 2005.

Gallery

Concept Art

Mark Anthony Austin

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  Art of Ruth the mutant Girl Scout.

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  Art of Vegas waitress Jo Night.

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Gregorio Miller

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  Art of a Phone Booth.

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  Art of a garage.

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  Concept art of a Garage.

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  Concept art of the rabbit.

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  Art of Area 51.

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  Art of a Death Ray.

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  Art of "Jupitor Station", a location from the film.

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  Concept art of a Hollywood set

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  Concept art of scenery

Sean Eckols

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  Concept art of Henry, Spig (the cat) and Mr. Buttons (the rabbit) sledding

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  Concept art of a character

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  Concept art of Jo Night/Knight

Uncredited/Other

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  Title Treatment.

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  Concept art of Henry and the eyepatch-wearing cat.

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  Concept art of Henry in a casino. By Paul Felix.

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  Concept art.

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  Concept art of the cat.

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  Concept art of the one-eyed cat.

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  Concept art of the cat and rabbit. By Daniel Chong.

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  Concept art.

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  Concept art of Henry.

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  Concept art of Henry.

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  Concept art.

Renders

Roger Borelli

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  Model of "BMBB".

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  Model of "BMBE".

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  Model of "Waitress".

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  Model of "Tomm".

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  Model of "BMOC".

Gregorio Miller

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  Model of "Mr. Buttons".

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  Model of "Mr. Buttons" with a bush.

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  Model of a banana tree.

Phil Zucco

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  Model of a character

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Dan Platt

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  Model of a car

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  Model of a house

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David Mooy

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  Model of a car

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Hal Lewis

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  Model of the "Jupiter Station" dinosaur

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  Test model of Henry

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  Turn around of the test Henry Model (animated gif)

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  Models of Henry (bottom left by Goob) and Spig (bottom right)

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  Turn around of the Spig model (animated gif)

James Stapp

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  Model of "Heinrich"

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  Model of Jo Night/Knight

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  Model of a plush gorilla chair

Mark Anthony Austin

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  Model of Jo Night/Knight

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  Models of Ruthie

Raffaello Vecchione

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  Model of Ruthie

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  Model of Ruthie

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  Model of Ruthie

Footage

Test footage from the film shown at SIGGRAPH 2005.

Compilation of test footage for the film. Animated by Gregorio Miller

Videos

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Model turn around from animator James Stapp (around 1:26)

See Also

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• The Incredibles (found full version of McDonald's Happy Meal commercial for Pixar animated film; 2004)
• The Incredibles (found online promotional trailers for Pixar animated film; 2004)
• Pixar (partially lost early CGI animated commercials from animation studio; 1989-1998)

Animation (Disney)

• Alice in Wonderland (partially lost original draft of Disney animated film; 1939)
• Aladdin (found Howard Ashman treatment of Disney animated film; 1988)
• The Black Cauldron (partially found deleted scenes of Disney animated film; 1985)
• Chanticleer (partially found production material of cancelled Disney animated film; 1940s-mid 1960s)
• Chicken Little 2 (partially found production material of cancelled sequel to Disney animated comedy film; 2006)
• Disney Circle Seven Animation (partially lost production material of cancelled Pixar sequel films; 2004-2006)
• Dumbo II (partially found production material from cancelled Disney animated sequel film; 2000s)
• Fantasia 2006 (partially lost production material for cancelled Disney animated sequel film; 2002-2004)
• Fraidy Cat (lost production material of cancelled Disney animated film; 2004-2005)
• Frozen (partially found early drafts of Disney animated film; 1937-2012)
• Gigantic (lost production material of cancelled Disney animated film; 2013-2017)
• The Jungle Book (lost Bill Peet version of Disney animated film; 1963-1964)
• Kingdom of the Sun (partially found original version of "The Emperor's New Groove" Disney animated film; late 1990s)
• The Lion King II: Simba's Pride (partially found production material and deleted scenes of Disney animated sequel film; 1995-1998)
• Maleficent (lost production material of cancelled Disney animated film; 2003-2005)
• Music Land (lost Disney animated anthology film; 1955)
• My Peoples (partially found production material of cancelled Disney animated film; late 1990s-early 2000s)
• The Search for Mickey Mouse (lost production material of cancelled Disney animated film; 2002)
• The Seven Dwarfs (partially found production material of cancelled direct-to-video prequel to "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" Disney animated film; 2000s)
• Tangled (partially found early drafts of Disney animated film; 2001-2010)
• Tinker Bell (partially found first draft of Disney animated film; 2007)
• Treasure Planet II (lost production material of cancelled Disney animated sequel film; 2002)
• Wild Life (lost production material for cancelled Disney animated film; late 1990s-2000)
• Zootopia (partially found pre-rewrite version of Disney animated film; early 2010s)

Animation (Pixar)

• A Tin Toy Christmas (lost production material of cancelled Pixar animated Christmas TV special; early 1990s)
• Cars 3 (lost deleted scene of Pixar animated sequel film; 2017)
• The Good Dinosaur (lost original version of Pixar animated film; 2011-2013)
• Inside Out (lost original Bing Bong death scene of Pixar animated film; 2015)
• Made in Point Richmond (found miscellaneous content from Pixar DVD; 1986-2000)
• Newt (partially found production material of cancelled Pixar animated film; early 2010s)
• Toy Story (partially found early test footage of Pixar animated film; 1992)
• Toy Story 4 (found original script of Pixar animated sequel film; 2013-2017)
• Toy Story & Toy Story 2 (partially found intermissions for 3D double feature re-release of Pixar animated films; 2009)
• Toy Story "Black Friday Reel" (partially found rough cut of Pixar animated film; 1993)
• Toy Story "Jessie" (found Patsy Montana Award acceptance speech animation of Pixar character; 2000)
• WALL·E (partially found original treatments of Pixar animated film; 1994-2008)

Audio

• Enchanted (lost deleted song from Disney live-action/animated fantasy comedy film; 2007)
• Fantasia (partially lost original audio of Disney animated film; 1940)
• Jack Wagner (partially lost Disney Park background music collection from American actor; 1970s-2001)
• Mars Needs Moms (found Seth Green vocal performance of Disney motion-capture animated film; 2011)
• The Nightmare Before Christmas (lost original Vincent Price audio of Disney stop-motion animated film; early 1990s)
• Pinocchio (lost Mel Blanc's "Gideon the Cat" dialogue from Disney animated film; 1940)
• Toy Story 2 (partially found Bullseye dialogue test footage from Pixar animated sequel film; late 1990s)

Live Action

• 101 Dalmatians (found "Spotted Landmarks" teaser trailer of Disney live-action film; 1995-1996)
• Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey (found deleted scenes from Disney live-action film; 1993)
• Sleeping Beauty (partially found live action reference material for Disney animated film; 1959)
• Something Wicked This Way Comes (lost original cut of Disney dark fantasy film; 1982)
• Walt Disney (lost physical Mickey Mouse animation reference footage of animator; late 1930s)

Short Films

• Alice Comedies (partially lost series of Walt Disney animated short films; 1920s)
• Blowin' in the Wind (found Pixar animated short film; 1985)
• Lafflets (lost series of Walt Disney animated short films; 1922-1923)
• Language Arts Through Imagination (found series of Disney educational short films; 1988-1989)
• Mickey and Minnie Mouse (lost unauthorized pornographic animated short film; existence unconfirmed; 1936)
• Mickey's Man Friday (partially found production material of unproduced remake of Disney animated short film; 1939-1941)
• Oswald the Lucky Rabbit (partially lost series of Walt Disney animated short films; 1927-1928)
• Poor Papa (found "Oswald the Lucky Rabbit" Walt Disney animated short film; 1927)
• The Princess Academy (lost production material of cancelled Disney animated short film; 2009)
• Short Subject aka "Mickey Mouse in Vietnam" (found unofficial animated short film; 1968)
• Tales from Radiator Springs "To Protect and Serve" (lost episode of "Cars" animated miniseries; 2015)
• Totally Twisted Fairy Tales (partially found Disney animated short series; 1997)
• Uncle Walt (lost unauthorized Disney short film; 1964)

External Links

• Wikipedia page for Bolt which includes information about American Dog.
• Roger Borelli's CGsculpture page
• Gregory Miller's webpage which includes some concept art for American Dog
• Daniel Chong's Twitter thread about the plot