Any Lost Media Theories?

My lost media theories are pretty recent-ish.

My first one is that the movie American Dog actually got further along than most people realize. The book "Creativity Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration" actually confirms it having a test screening, which was a fact that I always felt as being dubious before reading it. I also discovered several cgi models from the movie via the tumblr account Lost Disney as well as personal deep dives into various animator accounts mentioned on there. Most were not textured, but the fact they existed was extremely interesting to me. I don't expect a fully rendered complete movie out of it, but I wouldn't be shocked if some animations were done before being reworked from scratch into Bolt.

My second theories come from the Martin and Claudia pilot from WB, which I discussed here. Not too likely though, just stuff I think is interesting to think about.

OH DO I!? I mean, I AM the insane one, so of course I'm gonna have some lost media theories!:

1. Space Cats by Paul Fusco may've originally been conceptualized as a 65-episode series for weekly syndication(think of shows like Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog). I thought of this due to the show's premise & structure. The premise is definitely something a syndicated show: A trio of characters(in this case, Tom, Scratch & Sniff) solving the problem-of-the-day, with Jay Ward style humor, bizarre plots & bad guys with ridiculous plans. The opening narration of every episode(plays after the intro & is the puppet segment of an otherwise animated series) is a segment in which the Space Cats crew are described. The 1st part of the segment is the same throughout each episode, which is unusual for a 13 episode Saturday morning cartoon, but does sound like something a 65-episode syndicated show would do.

The 2nd part involves Captain Catgut, the Space Cats' captain & softball coach, gets a message from their leader, D.O.R.C., telling of an important mission. They're different every episode(including what Catgut does before D.O.R.C. calls), but the structure is the same: Catgut does something, D.O.R.C. calls & Catgut answers, they have some chatter, usually with D.O.R.C. being annoyed by Catgut's goofiness, D.O.R.C. tells him the mission, Catgut gets said trio to do the mission... yeah, every episode has that structure. It's varied enough that they're still entertaining & pretty darn funny(and is usually at its best when the plot is completely insane, like that episode about Water Water Everywhere World), but it's still same enough that it would've fitted better on syndication than as one of NBC's last Saturday morning cartoons(it aired on the 1991-1992 Saturday morning season... alongside Yo Yogi!. Yeah... not a good look). Maybe a couple folks at Marvel Productions wanted the show to be a 65-episode syndicated show, but Paul Fusco might've had an ego alongside his perfectionism attitude that led to it being on NBC, which ended up being a big mistake as it ended up not getting as much of a cult following as it would've likely gotten on weekly syndication.

2. Shove It! on Atari 2600 was a hoax done by Bob Curtiss to trick Tempest, the Atariprotos site owner, into believing it somehow. I considered this due to how absurd it sounds. It was apparently gonna be a 2-player game that required 2 TV screens & 2 Atari 2600 consoles. Apparently the 2 consoles would've communicated through a serial data transfer with a serial cable connected to one of the console's joystick ports. Yeah, that sounds a bit too insane, especially in 1983. Unless an actual prototype shows up one day, I don't think this was ever real at all & that it's all a joke. Yet somehow Tempest seems to have fallen for it as it's on the ironically named "Rumor Mill" part of the site about some unreleased Atari 2600/5200/7800/8-Bit computer games that were said(or confirmed) to have been in development.

3. The Gravediggers Squad, the English dub of La brigada de los sepultureros by Neptuno Films, likely never saw any airtime outside of Animania HD because of there already being several other spooky cartoons from around the same time, it being on the more comedic side & very poor animation.

4. La Ultima Reserva's English dub, The Last Reservation(if it exists outside of a title card & a short video of it), might've been recorded in the United States due to the show being about some Native Americans(who are gophers, crocodiles(?), &... bulls? prairie dogs? I don't know) being transported years into the future, in a city filled with modern day anthropomorphic animals. Again, if it REALLY exists. There isn't much evidence to prove its existence so far.

5. Undumped Wiki's Greed game for Sega Genesis might've possibly been supposed to based on that 1920s psychological silent film? Otherwise I have no idea. I can't find anything about this anywhere else.

6. The supposed Australian English dub of Magical Doremi/Ojamajo Doremi described in a Kidscreen article in 1999 might've actually been a dub of a different show entirely. This comes from how early the mention of this dub was, being 1999 rather than say, 2000 or 2001. This is also due to there seemingly having been no one in Australia who remembers this show having aired around that time period. This was before simuldubs became a common thing for anime & it would usually take 2-3 years for an anime to reach English-speaking territories officially. Also, the 4Kids Magical DoReMi dub aired in Australia on Nickelodeon, making it extra unlikely that Australia originally had their own dub from a completely different distributor. So, it's likely that it's a different show entirely, possibly of Western European origin. I kinda doubt that it's an Aussie show since it would've likely at least been somewhat known about by those who know about Australian animation. It could also be from some other Eastern nation besides Japan & Australia, though that's kinda unlikely in my eyes, at least to the best of my knowledge(I couldn't find much 1990s animated TV shows being made in Eastern Europe aside from The Little Flying Bears being a Croatian/Canadian co-production & most Asian countries weren't really doing any due to their circumstances at the time, the few exceptions were Japan, Malaysia, China, Taiwan, the Philippines & India). Honestly, who even knows what this thing even was.

1: Since the final round of cuts occurred to The Land Before Time about 2 weeks before the films premier, it’s possible that this post-production cut of the film could’ve been sent out to theaters, before they were then contacted by universal to not screen that cut, and that they would be sent the more up to date version. (Sigh, I need to try to find some way to revive hype. Anybody got any ideas by chance?)

2: Films like B.O.O probably could have gotten far enough into development to have a trailer made for the film. This was before the pandemic, when movie trailers would be released about 5-7 months before the premier, and considering B.O.O was cancelled in January 2015, it’s possible that at least an unfinished trailer exists.

3: Speaking of B.O.O, my theory on what happens in the movie is that it would’ve opened up with Jackson moss dying, likely being killed off-screen or something, explaining why he’s a ghost. Another theory is that, since the Hauntlet has a self-destruct mode, Addison Drake would’ve been killed by being sucked into the hauntlet, they would set it onto self-destruct mode, and they would throw it before it then exploded, killing Addison inside.

4: The leaking of the cancelled Popeye movie was probably a fluke, and it’s never going to happen again with other movies that got cancelled. (It’s a shame).

5: After the day the clown cried gets screened next year, it will probably be made publicly available for anyone who visits the library of Congress, it will probably be found and leaked online the same way the wicked witch of the west episode was.

I hope it isn’t, but if it does happen again, it’s probably not for another like, 10 years to be honest.