After Treasure Planet became Disney Animation's biggest box office bombs, they had to take extra care on this movie to win audiences back.

After The Lion King became a major hit, Eisner demanded that they make another animated film starring animals. But this time, he wanted it to be set in the North American Forest, and be about bears. In fact, he originally wanted it to be similar to The Lion King in that… it would have a Shakespeare style story. This time it was going to be based off of of: "King Lear", about an old blind bear. In: "1997", animation veteran "Aaron Blaise", saw this as a great opportunity to put his skills in great use. Thus, he became the movie's director, alongside: "Robert Walker" to be his co-director.

In their first version, the story centered around a father and a son. The son is turned into a bear.

For Tom Schumaccer, he knew that the film was a real winner, especially with the transformation being a key scene that would bring the entire film together and brought on board Tarzan/Atlantis writer "Tab Murphy", to write the screenplay for the film.

As time went on, the story started to go through a transformation where the father and son dynamic got switched to the main character "Kenai", learning about the lessons of nature through a bear named "Grizz", voiced by Michael Clark Duncan. But during the writing process, they felt that there was something missing. There wasn't enough charm to really capture the film's heart. So they got rid of Grizz and replaced him with Koda, voiced by Jeremy Suarez, after hearing his audition for Finding Nemo.

BUT… the directors really liked their time with Michael Clark Duncan, they couldn't just kick him out of the movie. So they created a new character for him to voice called: "Tug", the leader of the bears at the Salmon Run.

To give the movie more humor, they reunited: "Rick Moranis", and "Dave Thomas" to play the roles of: "Rutt & Tuke", in the same style of their Second City TV characters: "Bob and Doug McKenzie".

To get the crew immersed in the environment of the feature, they went on several research trips throughout America to visit several National Parks. Including: "Denali", "Kenai Fjords", and "The Valley of 10,000 Smokes". These research trips were important for the team in order to capture the natural realism, and the beauty of the forest when painting their landscapes.

While Brother Bear was far from the first animated Disney to be presented in widescreen, it was the first to have its aspect ratio transitioned from one to another. It begins with a regular 1.85 out of 1, but then when Kenai wakes up as a bear, it becomes much wider at 2.35 out of 1, where not only is there much more to see, but the colors are more richer.

After his work on Tarzan, Phil Collins were more than happy to return to do the music for Brother Bear. However, he wanted to give himself an extra challenge by working on the score with: "Mark Manchina". Phil was going through a big learning curve with music, especially since now he was working on an original movie as oppose to an adaptation, but eventually he got the hang of it. However, the crew asked him to back up a bit from performing all of the songs in the film to try and give the movie more diversity. He did get to sing: "On My Way", "No Way Out", and "Look Through My Eyes", but in his place, Mark brought in several singers like: "Tina Turner", who sang: "Great Spirits", "The Blind Boys of Alabama", who sang "Welcome", and "The Bulgarian Women's Choir", who sang: "Transformation".

The movie was originally suppose to come out in 2004, but Disney then decided to put it out in the fall of 2003. Some thought it was because of production problems with other animated films they were making, but it was actually because it made more sense to promote Brother Bear on the DVD platinum edition of Lion King.

When the movie came out on November 1st, 2003, people's point of view of the feature was… not very good. Especially from the critics.

Sure, the critics thought the animation was pretty, but other than that, it just felt like a dull animated movie with a dull plot. Which… coming from Disney made that additionally underwhelming.

It did manage to get some nominations during the awards season, including an Oscar for Best Animated Feature (although it ultimately lost to Finding Nemo).

Box office wise though, it was a major improvement over Treasure Planet. It had a lower budget of $64,000,000, and it made $250.4,000,000. Sure it wasn't as much as Lilo & Stitch, but it still paid for some of the losses on Treasure Planet.

However, the biggest downside in all of this, was that Disney's rival animation studio: "Dreamworks", was emerging and making their own successful computer animated films. Computer animated films were fine when it was just Pixar doing them, but when Dreamworks crashed into the scene with: "Shrek", and that film dazzled people more than Atlantis did and was much more financially successful, Disney realized that they were in a new age of animation. Long gone were the days of hand drawn characters doing song numbers, now they've entered a new period where animated films were much more comedy driven, and a new dimension was added with CG to bring audiences to amazing worlds in a way that had never been seen before.

Now that computer animation was taking over, Disney was viewed as old fashioned. Not only were they failing to impress audiences, but it was starting to cost them. And if they ever hoped to survive in this new digital world, they'd have to learn to adapt and start making their own computer animated movies. Which unfortunately meant that they had to sacrifice… hand drawn animation.

Remember seeing this one in theaters and I remember enjoyed this movie. Very underrated film for me.

Out of the two Disney films home on the range and chicken little I really do hope you do give those two films the burn in hell rating cuz those two should never be watched or seen or just downright be mentioned those two are such horrible Disney movies.

I never watched home on the range but I seen Chicken Little I used to love the movie but not anymore plus my dad likes to film I respect his opinion on it but the same time I down or I hate it and despise it Chicken Little is the absolute worst that Disney has ever did the CG is weak the jokes are not funny and overall Chicken Little is just mean-spirited and downright offensive to the Disney viewer I never want to watch it again but hey I'm doing a marathon on my own so I have no choice but to revisit this abomination but once you review home on the range of Chicken Little I will definitely be 100% agreeing with you.

Great review man I never watch this movie but I will see it in the future but you do make a good point that it's definitely one of the more lower tier Disney films plus fun fact you know the actor who played the main character it's the same actor that played the joker in 2019's joker anyways great review man and stay safe out there.

Aw man, I hate hearing that this film isn’t that great. It was one of m and my brothers’ favorite films growing up, we watched it so many goddamn times. Haven’t seen it in a quite a few years though.

Yeah…i never had the urge to fully see this movie as a whole due to hearing how bad it is. I remember seeing the clip of that big emotional moment with that Phil Collins song playing and being upset by that. And now youre reviewing two of the worst Disney films back to back…godspeed.

Kenai's name is pronounced keen eye not kanai.The other two brothers are called Sitka and Denahi. I love the gta 5 joke with Trevor because Trevor is basically the polar opposite of a stereotypical Canadian. Its like they had all these Canadian stereotypes and Trevor is like, 'Man fuck this' and mows it down with a machine gun. No wonder why all the Trevor rampages in gta 5 happen because almost everybody makes fun of Trevor for being Canadian even though I did not know Trevor was Canadian until much recently