A Star Trek Movie That Was Never Made Delayed Treasure Planet For Over A Decade

In one such retrospective, on “The Tammy Tuckey Show,” Musker and Clements recalled the genesis of the project, pitched to Disney some 18 years prior to the film’s actual release. They describe the writers’ room where the studio’s decision-makers would elect their next big-budget projects and revealed that then-CEO of Disney, Michael Eisner, had taken his approval process directly from Chuck Barris-hosted 1976 game show “The Gong Show.” On “The Gong Show,” contestants would perform unusual entertainment acts for a panel of celebrity judges. If the judges found the act to be intolerable, they could strike a gong up on the wall and end the act immediately. Only acts that made it to the end received a score. 

Eisner was evidently a fan of “The Gong Show,” and would listen to a litany of ideas from his writers. If it didn’t immediately grab him, it was “gonged.” Whether or not Eisner actually hit a gong remains unclear. At first, Clements revealed that one of Disney’s eventual blockbusters was initially passed up prior to striking on “Treasure Planet.” He described the process like this:

“Michael Eisner was very new at Disney, and he had this brainstorm technique called ‘The Gong Show’ where … he wanted us to go out and come back with five new ideas for animated features. And I did. And when we came back and reconvened, he said, ‘I only want you to say your best idea.’ And when he came to me, I said my best idea, and that was ‘The Little Mermaid.’ Which actually got gonged! It got ‘un-gonged’ very soon, but at the time it got gonged. And it was Jeffrey Katzenberg, actually, who gonged it.”