Sightlines · reception

How The Thief and the Cobbler was received

1993 · Richard Williams · The Thief and the Cobbler on Sightlines

The arc

Barely released at all in any form Richard Williams approved — seized by its bond company in 1992, recut and dumped as 'The Princess and the Cobbler' and Miramax's 'Arabian Knight' — it's since been reclaimed as animation's great lost masterpiece, largely thanks to fan restorations of Williams's original vision.

What’s debated

The eternal debate: which version even counts as 'the film' — the butchered releases, the workprint, or Garrett Gilchrist's fan-made 'Recobbled Cut' — and whether Disney's Aladdin, which beat it to theaters, owed it an uncomfortable debt.

Its footprint

It's the canonical cautionary tale of animation history — nearly three decades in production, snatched away near the finish line — endlessly invoked in video essays, and the subject of the documentary 'Persistence of Vision' (2012); the Recobbled Cut made it an early landmark of fan restoration culture.

Where it stands

A cult object of the highest order among animation lovers: the 'greatest animated film never made,' passed around in workprint form like samizdat.

Did you know? Vincent Price voiced the villain ZigZag across recording sessions spanning decades of the film's famously long production — one of the longest in film history, with Williams working on it from the 1960s until it was taken from him in 1992.