Accidentally Correct Writing: Roads in the Quechua Empire actually did have rest stops that provided food and lodging, but they were obviously nothing like the modern-day Greasy Spoon depicted in the film. Additionally, giant pill bugs are served there. While pill bugs that large do not exist in real life, there are animals related to pill bugs found in the deep ocean that really are that big, and people have eaten them, although it would be a lot easier to find a restaurant that serves them in east Asia than in Peru.
Acclaimed Flop: The film received decent reviews but failed to recoup twice its budget, grossing $89.3 million domestically and $169.3 million worldwide on a $100 million budget.
In addition to Bucky the squirrel, Bob Bergen also voices the fly that Kuzco sees in the jungle.
In the Japanese dub of Kronk's New Groove, Showtaro Morikubo voiced both Kuzco and Tipo, in the later case as the replacement of his previous voice actor, Yuuki Tokiwa.
The European French dub has famous TV and radio imitator Didier Gustin as Kuzco.
In the Canadian French dub, Kuzco is voiced by actor and TV host Marc-André Coallier.
In the Japanese dub, Kuzco is voiced by actor Tatsuya Fujiwara, aka Shuya Nanahara and Light Yagami in the Death Note's live-action films. Likewise, the theme song guy is voiced by the late singer Hideki Saijo, who many anime fans would recognize him as the singer of the first opening theme of ∀ Gundam, "Turn A Turn".
In the Italian dub, professional comedians Luca Bizzarri and Paolo Kessisoglu voice Kuzco and Kronk respectively, and Yzma is voiced by none other than the late Anna Marchesini, an Italian comedy legend.
In the Brazilian dub, Kuzco is voiced by Selton Mello (who ironically initially started his career as voice actor, providing voices for the Brazilian dub of movies like The Breakfast Club and The Goonies and even voiced Doofus Drake in the original DuckTales), Pacha is voiced by Humberto Martins, Yzma is voiced by Marieta Severo and Theme Song Guy is voiced by famous musician Ed Motta (who previously worked with the Brazilian arm of Disney singing "Someday" in The Hunchback of Notre Dame and the whole score of Tarzan).
The German dub has Michael "Bully" Herbig as Kuzco. At the time, he was almost exclusively known for his TV sketch show, so it almost counts as Retroactive Recognition. Herbig's first movie, which made him a household name, wouldn't be published until a year after Emperor's New Groove, but at this point, he's one of Germany's most well-known comedians. It was the other way round with Yzma's voice actress Elke Sommer, who was a star and something of a sex symbol in the 60s and 70s, but the film's target audience had likely never heard of her.
In the European Spanish dub, Kuzco's role was given to comedian Ángel Garó, in his third and to date last dubbing work after FernGully: The Last Rainforest — where he notably voiced every single character — and A Troll in Central Park.
Christmas Rushed: The film was firmly set for a 2000 date, hence Roger Allers' resignation. The reason wasn't Christmas, though - it was rushed due to a Happy Meal deal with McDonald's.
Completely Different Title: 'Groove' is one of those words that doesn't really have a perfect equivalent in most languages, so this was unavoidable.
In Norway, the film is given the Richard III-inspired title ''A Kingdom for a Llama." Some merchandise does name it after its original title however (with "style" replacing "groove"), though the former mentioned remains the most known.
The German title translates the same as the Norwegian one, probably because translating the original title would have sounded extremely forced.
The Hungarian title can be roughly translated as Mindless Empire or The Empire Gone Crazy.
The European French title translates as Kuzco, The Megalomaniac Emperor. The Canadian French title instead goes for A New Kind of Emperor.
In Portugal, the title would be hard to translate in way that would be easy to understand so the film is simply titled Pacha e o Imperador, which simply uses the two main characters names as the title.
In Castillian Spanish, the title is changed to The Emperor and his Crazy Things. In Latin American Spanish, the order is changed to The Emperor's Crazy Things.
The Italian title follows the Latin American formula and it is literally translated as "The Emperor's Crazy Antics".
The Israeli title translates to The Emperor Fell on His Head.
The Japanese title translates to The King that Turned Into a Llama.
Creative Differences: Roger Allers wanted another dramatic musical like his own The Lion King, while Mark Dindal vouched for reworking the movie as a screwball comedy. Disney sided with the latter, and Allers resigned.
As seen in The Sweatbox, many involved were unhappy that the film had to be retooled.
As the story was first being overhauled, Eartha Kitt wasn't too keen on the changes made to Yzma. The original script gave her depth and nuance, while the ultimate version was a broad cartoon villain. Eventually, though, she warmed to the character's new incarnation.
Creator Cameo: According to supervising animator Nik Ranieri (who animated the opening scene), he provided Kuzco's sobbing in the opening in place of David Spade during the ADR process of the film.
Creator-Driven Successor: To The Lion King at least production-wise. Original story developer Roger Allers along with Matthew Jacobs were asked to conceive the idea, Kingdom in the Sun because then vice-president Thomas Schumacher enjoyed Allers success with that film before Allers left the project leaving it into the hands of Mark Dindal and Randy Fullmer.
Just about every song was deleted, except for one, with another played over the end credits. They're still on the soundtrack, though. There's a whole documentary, The Sweatbox, about the film's troubled production (see Troubled Production below) which puts a great deal of focus on these songs (which were written by Sting).
The most notable of which was Yzma's Villain Song, "Snuff Out the Light", which, while a fantastic song, was actually a necessary cut, because the plot changed and made the motivation and ultimate goal described by the song irrelevant. It is available on the official soundtrack.
Yzma would have sung a Dark Reprise to "Perfect World," but it was removed during post-production.
Dark Horse Victory: In Mouse Madness, which pitted all of the Disney Animated Canon in a tournament-styled poll, Emperor's New Groove won it all despite being a #9 seed. Defeating Beauty and the Beast by a score of 20-10 in the second round set the tone for its run. The hosts of the podcast were just as surprised as anyone.
David Spade was in his thirties when he voiced the teenage Kuzco.
Sting suggested Tom Jones sing "Perfect World" under the assumption that Jones was younger than him. Jones is actually 12 years older than Sting.
Deleted Scene: After Kronk stuffs Kuzco in a bag and loses him in Pacha's cart, there was a scene where Pacha is standing in the middle of a giant model version of his village when Kuzco's army destroys it as practice for when they destroy his real village. This scene was fully colored before it was cut for being too dark and serious for the film.
The candle-holder in the dinner scene depicts Huaca, a sentient amulet character who was cut in the overhaul.
When Yzma first plots to get rid of Kuzco, Kronk - who had just been congratulating her for taking out her frustrations on several busts of the emperor instead of the real guy - nervously asks if she means "the real Kuzco"; Kingdom of the Sun was to be a Prince and the Pauper story where Kuzco switched places with a lookalike, making this line a subtle nod to the scrapped story.
Yzma was originally intended to be obsessed with youth. In the sequel, her scheme involves getting rich by selling (fake) youth potions.
Dueling Movies: Against two films, to boot: The Road to El Dorado from DreamWorks Animation, and Doraemon: Nobita and the Legend of the Sun King from Japan, all three of which are based on pre-Columbian civilizations. Disney themselves released Atlantis: The Lost Empire to go up against El Dorado. New Groove did win since it received better reviews and El Dorado bombed and sunk that franchise immediately. Legend of the Sun King as part of a wider franchise became the highest-grossing film at $32 million, but obviously it pales in comparison to the $169 million Emperor earned due to not being released outside of East Asia (since the series it's part of is unknown outside of the region).
DVD Commentary: It's mainly producer Randy Fullmer and director Mark Dindal commentary, but they're also joined by art director Colin Stimpson, character designer Joseph C. Moshier, head of story Stephen Anderson, Kuzco animator Nik Ranieri, and Pacha animator Bruce W. Smith.
The film started out as a Prince and Pauper film called Kingdom of the Sun in 1994, described by Lion King co-director Roger Allers as an "epic picture mixing elements of adventure, comedy, romance and mysticism". It would have been in the traditional style of Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast. The plot would've involved a greedy, selfish emperor who finds a peasant who looks just like him, so the emperor swaps places with the peasant for fun. Meanwhile, the evil witch Yzma has plans to summon the evil god Supai and capture the sun so that she may retain her youth forever. Discovering the switch between the prince and the peasant, Yzma turns the emperor into a llama and threatens to reveal the pauper's identity unless he obeys her. The emperor learns a lesson about humility, and ends up loving a llama herder named Mata. Together, she and the emperor set out to stop Yzma's evil plans. Sting was signed on as the song composer. Disney execs thought that due to the poor critical and commercial reception of Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, both of which were serious dramatic musicals in the vein of Sun, the film would be unsuccessful. Compounding this was the fact that the release date had been firmly set at the year 2000, and by 1998 it was clear that production would not wrap up in time. Disney execs ordered production on Sun to be halted. Almost all the original plot points and characters were scrapped. Most of Sting's compositions were cut as well. The film became transformed into a "Looney Tunes meets The Muppets"-style slapstick buddy comedy. While the end result was warmly received by critics, who found it a breath of fresh air compared to most of Disney's fare, animator Andreas Deja, who supervised animation on Yzma during Sun, was displeased with what the film was reworked into, and left to work on Lilo & Stitch (2002) before the retool. Allers was also disappointed with the final film, calling it a "simple slapstick comedy", and saying that if he had had more time, he could've made the film according to his original visions.
On the DVD commentary, director Dindal grumbles about a minor example, claiming an executive at Disney forced him to include a particular The Wizard Of OzShout-Out.
Fake Nationality: Though the film takes place in a fictionalized depiction of the Inca empire, none of the featured actors are natively from the setting (which covered modern-day Peru and parts of Chile, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, and Colombia), with the majority (except Eartha Kitt, who was of mixed African and Cherokee descent) being white Americans.
Irony as She Is Cast: When called upon to sing the theme song for Kuzco that he had written, Sting said that a then-50-year-old wouldn't do that song justice and that it was suited for someone younger and hipper. The filmmakers went with Tom Jones, who is ten years older than Sting.
In the US, there were six different launching toys; Kuzco, Kronk, Pacha, Yzma, Kuzco as a llama, and Yzma as a cat.
In Europe, there were eight different figures; Kuzco, Pacha, Kronk, Yzma, Bucky, the Crocodile, and two different figures of Kuszco as a Llama.
Asia featured four of the toys from the European set; Kuzco as a llama, Pacha, Kronk, and Bucky.
Missing Trailer Scene: In the trailer, during the scene where Pacha accidentally wraps himself and Kuzco around a tree branch after he says "You're safe now," he mutters "Or not." In the final product, it skips right to Kuzco sarcastically berating him.
No Export for You: The two games for the GBC and Playstation were never released in Japan.
The Other Marty: In the Latin American Spanish dub, Kuzco was originally going to be voiced by a soap opera actor (Arath de la Torre, to be exact), and while he did finish the dub and get paid, it was never used because Walt Disney's Mexican branch didn't like his performance and, probably to avoid another sub-par performance with the main character (just like they did with Ricky Martin for the dub of Herculesnote In fact, the dub of the film had a joke done at Ricky Martin's expense, possibly as a extended reference to this.), he was replaced with Jesús Barrero, who originally only voiced him in the trailers.
Playing Against Type: Wendie Malick, usually known for playing deadpan snarkers, plays a sweet (though still somewhat sarcastic) housewife and mother of two.
John Goodman, having done previous roles for Disney through their Touchstone and Hollywood Pictures branches, does his first official Disney role here as Pacha. He would go on to work with Disney for many more films, most famously the Monsters, Inc. franchise.
Promoted Fanboy: Sting, who would write "Perfect World" and "My Funny Friend and Me" has been a fan of watching Disney films such as Sleeping Beauty (1959) and was happy to be a part of one.
In his review of The Rugrats Movie, the Critic notes that David Spade and Whoopi Goldberg were the respective voices of Ranger Frank and Ranger Margaret, and says that he imagined a different animated mashup between the two actors. The image he shows is one of Shenzi about to eat Kuzco in his llama form.
The Critic has reviewed the film.
SuperMarioLogan: In "Jeffy's Birthday Trip!", Mario takes Jeffy to Sam's Fun City in an attempt to pass it off as Disney World. Jeffy wants to ride the ferris wheel, but Mario doesn't because he's afraid of heights. When they get in their seat, they paraphrase Yzma. First Jeffy says "Pull the lever, Kronk!", and when the man operating the ferris wheel pulls the lever, Mario says "Wrong lever!"
Screwed by the Lawyers: One of the main reasons why any form of the original Kingdom of the Sun concept can't be made at another studio; while the final product is quite different from what could have been, from a legal standpoint, Disney kept just enough elements from the unmade version to prevent Roger Allers from realizing his vision elsewhere.
Throw It In: By the account of the writers, a lot of what made the film so notoriously offbeat was that they didn't really have the time to iron out their scripts, which meant a lot of ideas that were thrown out on the fly ended up being kept. They gave the example of Yzma being saved by a trampoline salesman.
Mark Dindal: Yzma... is falling off the tower and we’re like, “How are we going to get her back up? She’s not going to splat.” I don’t remember if it was Dave or Don Hall, another story artist who’s become a director since, said, “What if there’s a trampoline salesman at the bottom and she hits that and bounces back up?” We said, “Oh yeah. That’s what it should be.”
According to David Spade, he improvised a lot of gags and throwaway jokes in the recording sessions, including references to George W. Bush and Michael Jackson. The lines were cut because the creators didn't want the movie to be dated.
Troubled Production: One of the biggest perpetrators of these tropes in the Disney canon.
Originally, it was going to be a more traditional Disney epic called Kingdom of the Sun, with a typical Prince and Pauper storyline. After a Writer Revolt, Executive Meddling, and a Retool (as the two directors were going in opposite directions, and the film had only a short span of two years to get completed), they scrapped the idea of doing a serious epic, and the resultant film was completed in an entirely different style at great expense and at the last minute. Several animators, such as Andreas Deja who wanted to work on "a great film", left in a huffnote He would end up flying down to Florida to work on Lilo & Stitch (2002), as well as many other staff members who just left Disney entirely.
There's a rumor that, at one point, the production got so out of hand that a Disney executive stormed into Randy Fullmer's office, got in the his face, held his thumb and forefinger an inch apart and angrily remarked "Your film is this close to being shut down!" before storming out.
Related to Troubled Production: Mrs. "Sting", Trudie Styler, filmed a (slightly unfinished) documentary on the film's production, The Sweatbox. It was screened once, but since Disney owns this document of chaos, they make sure it never gets released (very likely due to there being a large amount of swearing in it), though it was leaked on the internet in March 2012. Platypus Comix did a review when they got their hands on the workprint, which can be found here.
Wag the Director: Sting, who was already annoyed about having to stay on a project for which he'd already exhausted all of the time he'd set aside, nearly left the project when he objected to the original ending where Kuzco spared Pacha's village, but still built his water park on the hill next to his. He wrote to the producers that this meant that Kuzco hadn't learned anything, not to mention went against his personal beliefs about the environment, to which they agreed and had the necessary changes made. Funnily enough, the movie proper makes a joking reference to this, with the reformed Kuzco telling Pacha (who had earlier commented that the hills where his village was built would "sing" when the dawn breaks over them) that he is scrapping his water park because he "was dragged all over those hills and didn't hear any singing!", though it's all but said that it's a thinly-veiled excuse to keep from openly admitting he'd learned his lesson.
Kuzco was originally named Manco (after Manco Cápac, the legendary founder of the Inca civilization) until someone realized that it was also phonetically the same as the Japanese word for "pussy".
In the original Kingdom of the Sun, Pacha looked identical to Kuzco (who was named Manco at the time) for the Prince and Pauper plot and would've been voiced by Owen Wilson. He recorded all his dialogue but when the film was retooled, his voice work was thrown out.
While Kuzco's personality didn't seem to change that much through the retool, his original character design (and consequently, Pacha's, as shown in rough animation of the duo's first meeting) was markedly different from the final product.
Marc Shaiman originally scored the film but had his work rejected after a test screening and was replaced by John Debney. Shaiman's work can be heard in The Sweatbox (the making-of documentary on the film and its Troubled Production) and in the video game where the clips from the movie are used. He describes his take as having too much Mickey Mousing.
Originally, Kuzco was going to have a love interest named Mata, to be voiced by Laura Prepon. For the finished film, the character was scrapped and her name was given to the waitress.
Pacha was also going to gain a love interest, Nina, voiced by Carla Gugino. She was Kuzco/Manco's betrothed who fell in love with Pacha while he was pretending to be the emperor.
The entire plot of Kingdom of the Sun was outlined in a character breakdown◊ and a story treatment here: 1◊, 2◊, 3◊, 4◊. Mata seems to have been a later addition in the pre-production process, as there's no mention of her in the original pitch.
The movie as made was supposed to end with Kuzco building Kuzcotopia on a hill further away from Pacha's village and inviting Pacha and his family to stay in it, before Sting pointed out that if Kuzco still built his mansion after all his experiences he wouldn't really have learned anything.
A smaller one: Kuzco's insults to his potential brides were originally much nastier ("Moo." "Get a human head." etc), but the filmmakers realized that it made him much more unlikable than they needed him to be.
There was going to be a short talking Incan statue sidekick for Yzma, the Huaca, to be voiced by Harvey Fierstein (who previously worked with Disney on Mulan). Ironically, in the initial outline, the Huaca was actually the prince's chief servant and a good guy who did not get along with Yzma.
Kronk was nowhere in the original story. His presence was cemented when writer David Reynolds and storyboard artist Chris Williams wrote the dinner party scene and the rest of the team loved it.
According to David Reynolds, one scene would have had Pacha introduce Kuzco to the other villagers so he could get to know them as people and not just faceless subjects. One of the villagers would have been voiced by Adam West, as a Cloudcuckoolander who pledged his army of scarecrows to restore Kuzco to the throne. Another proposal for the scene would have turned Kuzco's visit into a montage, with the screen splitting into smaller and smaller frames until it was nothing but barely-perceptible snippets... along with a live-action clip of the Space Shuttle launch.
As stated in this podcast with people that worked in the movie, at one point Kuzco lost the ability to speak when he was a llama and a different idea was pitch for the waterfall scene but was cut due to budget.
In the Mexican-Spanish dub, originally Kuzco was going to be voiced by celebrity Arath de la Torre, who recorded all his lines and was even paid. After a week of work, Disney deemed his voice acting to be very poor, and he was later replaced by Mexican voice actor Jesús Barrero, who did all the dub work in one day.
Working Title: After the retool, the film's working title was Kingdom in the Sun.
Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: Due to the film's Troubled Production, there was never a completed script written. Shortly after the film's release, the Disney archives requested a copy of the script, forcing the filmmakers to realize and admit that they didn't have one. Instead, they gathered all of the film's written material that they could, which was then compiled into the first and only draft of the film's script while it was already showing in theaters.
Writer Revolt: Changing the typical Disney Renaissance-era epic into a screwball comedy was nothing but this. Disney's staff was sick of doing blockbuster musicals and fought for a smaller, more experimental film when Kingdom of The Sun was rejected. In turn, a number of the original team who weren't fired willingly left, believing that the retool would trivialize their work.
Write What You Know: When the gag of baby Kuzco was added to the beginning of the film, Nik Ranieri, his lead animator, begged the directors to let him animate it because of how much it reminded him of his two toddlers and newborn at home and wanted to apply his observation of them to animation. Every frame of that gag is based on his kids. The design was specifically based on his daughter Belinda.
, which, while a fantastic song, was actually a necessary cut, because the plot changed and made the motivation and ultimate goal described by the song irrelevant. It is available on the official soundtrack.
