There have been many theories that Disney has been trying to adapt Kingdom Hearts in some capacity beyond the games. Considering the series is based in the many worlds from their long-running IPs, it seemed like the perfect show for them to adapt that plays into nostalgia while also offering something new to draw an audience in.
As it turns out director Seth Keasley, famous for the Adam Sandler animated film Eight Crazy Nights, was actively working on a Kingdom Hearts pilot that even managed to test well. While the initial script he received was just like the game featuring characters from the game series reliving the Disney story, he got a chance to rewrite the script that tested incredibly well. Yet, the project seemingly never picked up and a recent experience seemingly led to him wanting to share what that pilot would’ve been like.
At the time, we weren’t even really allowed to do sequential story, like every episode had to stand on its own and also with the pilot, it had to stand on its own, it had to be ‘episode seven’. I couldn’t do the origin story… so I said, I like it, I wanna do it and then they gave me a script and I read the script and the script read like an episode of Aladdin co-starring the characters from Kingdom Hearts. And I was like, ‘I don’t wanna do that’, I said, ‘I don’t like the script, I wanna do a rewrite,’ and they said, ‘You’re fired,’… I was like, ‘It’s not that I hate the script, it’s that this reads like an episode of Aladdin co-starring Kingdom Hearts characters and I really think that this should be like an episode of Kingdom Hearts that happens to take place in the world of Aladdin.’ So I got to do a rewrite. I spent a lot of time with a writer and we came up with a new version that definitely felt like Kingdom Hearts.
Seth Kearsley
In his YouTube video, he highlighted that he had no idea about the gaming franchise before tackling the project but did explore it. He seemingly fell in love with it once he gave it a shot and tried to give it a chance. It’s crazy to think that this project never picked up and only now details are finding their way online.
There were some rumors hinting at a potential Disney+ series being in some form of development, which has never been officially announced or even hinted at. It still is a project that would make a lot of sense fo the Disney-owned streamer but we’ll still have to wait for more details on the fourth entry in the gaming franchise. Perhaps the next entry might spark some interest to revive a TV project once again.
Source: YouTube via ScreenRant
