Mickey Columbus

Mickey Columbus is a cancelled half-hour long short film, that was intended to be released in 1992. To an unknown extent, voice acting for the film had already been recorded prior to its cancellation.^[1]

Plot[]

Mickey Mouse in the role of Christopher Columbus, along with his shipmates, played by Donald Duck and Goofy goes to pitch his revolutionary idea that the world was round to the disgruntled and cynical King Ferdinand, played by Pete. While the King refuses to believe Mickey, his more optimistic wife, Queen Isabella, played by Clarabelle Cow thinks that there's a chance that he might be right and grants him three boats so that he can embark on a voyage to find out the truth. During the journey, Mickey begins to doubt himself and starts having nightmares about how the King will show him no mercy if it turns out the world really is flat. However, he and his friends eventually discover America, and all ends well.

Background[]

Development[]

With the coming of Mickey's 60th birthday in 1988, The Walt Disney Company felt that they should promote the name of the famous mouse and eventually formulated a plan to release a new Mickey Mouse short every two years, the first of these being 1990's The Prince and the Pauper.^[2] Due to the fact that 1992 was to be the 500th anniversary of the voyage of Christopher Columbus, They felt that the next short should commemorate just that. Dave Michener began development of the project but eventually, Burny Mattinson took over.^[3] Composers Michael and Patty Silversher wrote a song for the short, entitled "It's a Round, Round World", which was to accompany the scene in which Mickey, Donald, and Goofy pitch the idea that the world is round to the King and Queen.

The project was shelved for two reasons. Firstly, the animation team knew that the trio would have to encounter some native people in the New World, but did not want to offend anyone with distasteful stereotypes like the ones in Peter Pan. Secondly, wanting to move forward with the development of new full-length feature films, such as Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast, the company lost interest in doing any more short films.