[UPDATE] Seth Kearsley gives more details about the scrapped 2003 Kingdom Hearts Animated Series

[Leamax 746]

Seth Kearsley, the director and producer of the scrapped 2003 Kingdom Hearts animated series, has revealed more tidbits about the series on his Twitter including the cast list and part of the script for the pilot episode. You can check them out in the gallery below.

The cast list has many of the voice actors from the 2002 video game including David Gallagher and Hayden Panettiere as Riku and Kairi, respectivly as well as Susan Blakeslee as Maleficent, Tony Anselmo and Donald, Bill Farmer as Goofy, and Johnathan Freeman as Jafar. The legendary actor Frank Welker was going to lend his voice as the Tiger Head for the Cave of Wonders.

The only main difference was going to be the voice of Sora. Haley Joel Osment, the current voice of Sora, was unavailable at the time due to schedule conflict. Instead, Sora was going to be voiced by Bobby Edner, who had done some voice work for Disney in Monsters, Inc., Agent Cody Banks, and The Jungle Book 2. Fans of Final Fantasy might have remember him as the English dub of Vaan in Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy and Dissidia Final Fantasy NT. 

The script that Seth revealed was from the pilot episode titled "Agrabah". This episode would have included a dream sequence from Destiny Island when Sora and Riku were dueling with wooden swords with Kairi watching. An interesting aspect of the script is the order of takes. Hayden recorded her lines early while Bobby recorded his lines near the middle, and David recorded his lines later. 

In addition to the cast list and the script, Seth also revealed that he's trying to get the pilot episode converted over to digital and pending approval from Disney, will post it on his Youtube channel in the next upcoming weeks. 

For more about the scrapped animated series, you can check out the storyboard for the pilot on his DeviantArt page. We also did an interview with Seth back in 2017 so if you would like to read about that, then click here.

What do you think about these new pieces of information? Let us know in the comments!

UPDATE 10/6/2022: Seth Kearsley has shared a new video on his YouTube channel discussing the pilot's production and how it came to be.

He discusses how he came to rewrite the script of the pilot following his disappointment of how the original script was like. In his words, it read like an episode of Aladdin co-starring Kingdom Hearts characters rather than vice versa. 

Further, the test screening for the episode performed well, but it was ultimately shelved. 

 

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[Noleen#7811 3]

it's Panettiere lol

[matteso586 115]

I think David Gallagher and Hayden Panettiere are no longer able to sound like a 15-year-old and a 14-year-old respectively.

Edited September 29, 2022 by matteso586

[ienzo628 548]

5 hours ago, matteso586 said:

I think David Gallagher and Hayden Panettiere are no longer able to sound like a 15-year-old and a 14-year-old respectively.

Maybe some other Disney child actors can take their role if Disney ever licenses a KH series.

[matteso586 115]

13 hours ago, ienzo628 said:

Maybe some other Disney child actors can take their role if Disney ever licenses a KH series.

Maybe not strictly child actors. But I'm predicting Brandon Mychal Smith (Michelangelo in Rise of The TMNT) as Sora. Zeno Robinson (Remy from Big City Greens, and Hunter from The Owl House) as Riku, and Alyson Stoner as Kairi. Yes, I know Stoner is the current voice of Kairi.

[ienzo628 548]

14 hours ago, matteso586 said:

Maybe not strictly child actors. But I'm predicting Brandon Mychal Smith (Michelangelo in Rise of The TMNT) as Sora. Zeno Robinson (Remy from Big City Greens, and Hunter from The Owl House) as Riku, and Alyson Stoner as Kairi. Yes, I know Stoner is the current voice of Kairi.

That could work.

[gamefan37 0]

On 9/29/2022 at 10:28 PM, ienzo628 said:

Maybe some other Disney child actors can take their role if Disney ever licenses a KH series.

Disney has 100% ownership of the kingdom hearts IP and all the characters made specifically for kingdom hearts including sore, riku and kairi, so they don't need to license anything to get it made except for the final fantasy characters, the reason why the show was never made was because it was pitched during a time when Disney still didn't have any faith in kingdom hearts, but now they are aware of how popular and profitable kingdom hearts is (sora getting into super smash bros ultimate is proof how popular kingdom hearts has become), so if seth tried pitching the show now it would almost definitely get the greenlight

[ienzo628 548]

5 hours ago, gamefan37 said:

Disney has 100% ownership of the kingdom hearts IP and all the characters made specifically for kingdom hearts including sore, riku and kairi, so they don't need to license anything to get it made except for the final fantasy characters, the reason why the show was never made was because it was pitched during a time when Disney still didn't have any faith in kingdom hearts, but now they are aware of how popular and profitable kingdom hearts is (sora getting into super smash bros ultimate is proof how popular kingdom hearts has become), so if seth tried pitching the show now it would almost definitely get the greenlight

Would he ever pitch it again?