If you’re a fan of Disney and fantasy fiction, you are probably well aware of the mid-2000s novel series titled “The Kingdom Keepers.” Originally spanning seven novels (then expanded upon with a sequel series), ‘Kingdom Keepers’ told the story of a group of holograms that fought the evil Disney villains at the theme park when the lights went out and all the humans went home. For many, it’s a lovely way to tie in the various IPs into a fun, YA story. But according to filmmaker Kevin Smith, it’s unlikely we’ll ever see it come to life as a film/TV series anytime soon.
The “Clerks” filmmaker took to Twitter recently to talk about how he was hired to adapt the ‘Kingdom Keepers’ novels as a series for Disney+ that would have launched with the service back in November. However, according to Smith, the project was eventually killed by a new executive that was worried the series had too much Disney.
The filmmaker tweeted, “That was a blast to write 2 years ago. It was planned as one of the first shows to launch on what would become @disneyplus. Then a new exec was put in charge of the app and he killed KK. Said we used too much @Disney IP in one project (every character in the park comes to life).”
In another tweet, he added, “It was written with love by a kid who grew up watching “The Wonderful World of Disney” with his family every Sunday night. I renamed the main characters after the original team of Imagineers who worked w/ Walt. Felt like they overpaid me to write
@Disney fan fiction!”
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It’s unclear if we’ll ever see “The Kingdom Keepers” get resurrected for the big screen or Disney+ in the future. Obviously, the studio is keen on making projects based on existing IP, so it would make sense for an adaptation, eventually. However, you can also understand why the Mouse House wouldn’t want to use all of its IP for one series, perhaps confusing viewers and taking away from other projects.
Either way, it does sound as if Smith put a lot of work into it, so it’ll be interesting to see if some of those scripts ever hit the internet.
