![]() Carson had been a visual artist at ILM for many decades, working on films such Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, The Goonies, and Jurassic Park, before becoming part of the digital story department tasked with developing concepts and treatments for computer-animated features in the late ’90s. Who was involved? How far did it get to completion? Why was it canceled? Recently, we were put in contact with the director of this long-forgotten project, David Carson, who had previously never commented publicly on his connection to the film. In the years since, many questions about the film have lingered. That was when the Monkey Island Special Edition Collection came out, containing storyboards of the film that the project lead for these games, Craig Derrick, had located and cleared for release. ![]() Lucasfilm didn’t publicly confirm the Monkey Island film’s existence until 2011. But that hasn’t stopped people from speculating over the decades on what happened to it - one persistent rumor being that the project eventually morphed into the first Pirates of the Caribbean film, 2003’s The Curse of the Black Pearl. ![]() Lucasfilm has not shared many details publicly about the film since its cancellation in 2001, when the company shut down ILM’s digital story department, the division working on the project. In addition, there were some high-profile names in the world of film attached, with Steven Spielberg even linked to the project as a producer. Not only was this an attempt to bring the Monkey Island games to the screen, but it signaled one of Lucasfilm and Industrial Light & Magic’s first attempts to enter the world of digital features (a feat ILM wouldn’t manage until a decade later with Rango). In this graveyard of scrapped and forgotten projects, you’ll find the story of The Curse of Monkey Island, an undeveloped animated film named after the third game in the popular video game series. Over the almost 50 years that Lucasfilm has been a company, some notable projects have fallen by the wayside - from games such as Star Wars 1313, Project Ragtag, and Star Wars: First Assault to films including George Lucas’ original sequel trilogy.
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