В поисках Камелота: История создания мультфильма

1998 American animated film

Quest for Camelot was released by Warner Bros. under their Family Entertainment label on May 15, 1998 in the United States and Canada. It received mixed reviews and was a commercial failure, grossing $38.1 million against a $40 million budget. According to Lauren Faust, who had animated on the film, the film was initially envisioned with a PG 13 rating, in the vein of Ralph Bakshi's Wizards (1977), but it was changed to be more family friendly to compete with the Disney Renaissance films. The film was put into production before the story was finalized. However, during the fall of 1995, the animators were reassigned to finish Space Jam (1996). Meanwhile, in April 1996, Christopher Reeve was cast as King Arthur. During the interim, several story changes were made that resulted in creative differences between the Kroyers and the studio management. In particular, Excalibur replaced the Holy Grail, which Warner Bros. Feature Animation president Max Howard felt better reflected the film's setting: "The symbol of Camelot is the power of Excalibur, and that became a more interesting theme: Whoever held the sword, held the power." who later moved on to developing another project at Warner Bros. Feature Animation. The film's initial producer, Frank Gladstone, left the project in February 1997 and was replaced with Dalisa Cohen.

The film was mainly animated at the main Warner Bros. Feature Animation facility located in Glendale, California and London, England. Additional studios that worked on the film included Yowza! Animation in Toronto, Ontario, where they assisted in clean up animation, Heart of Texas Productions in Austin, and A. Film A/S in Copenhagen where, along with London, about a quarter of the film was animated overseas. The supervising animators were Athanassios Vakalis for Kayley, Chrystal Klabunde for Garrett, Cynthia Overman for Juliana, Alexander Williams for Ruber, Dan Wagner for Devon and Cornwall, Stephan Franck for the Griffin and Bladebeak, and Mike Nguyen for Ayden. To create the rock like ogre and other computer generated effects, the production team used Silicon Graphics' Alias Research software. According to Katherine Percy, the head of CGI effects, the software was originally designed for special effects used in live action films.

On January 31, 1996, David Foster and Carole Bayer Sager were attached to compose several songs for the film. The album peaked at #117 on the Billboard 200, and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song for "The Prayer". The song was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song, but lost to "When You Believe" from DreamWorks' The Prince of Egypt. On the soundtrack, "The Prayer" was performed separately by Celine Dion in English, and by Andrea Bocelli in Italian. The now better known Dion Bocelli duet in both languages first appeared in October 1998 on Dion's Christmas album These Are Special Times; it was also released as a single in March 1999 and on Bocelli's album Sogno in April 1999. "Looking Through Your Eyes" was the lead single for the soundtrack. Andrea Corr of The Corrs and Bryan White performed the song as a duet in the film, while LeAnn Rimes performed the song during the end credits as the pop version. The second single off the soundtrack, "I Stand Alone", performed by White in the film, and Steve Perry for the end credits. Other original songs composed for the film include "United We Stand", "On My Father's Wings", "Ruber", and "If I Didn't Have You".

The film was originally slated for November 14, 1997, but was pushed to May 15, 1998, to give the production team more time to finish the film.

The film was accompanied with a marketing campaign with promotional licensees including Tyson Foods, Kraft Foods, Frito Lay, Kodak, Act II Popcorn, and Hasbro via Kenner Products. The fast food restaurant Wendy's had toys based on the characters included in a kid's meal, while Kodak had print advertisements on over 200 million photo processing envelopes. Warner Bros. also partnered with Scholastic to produce children's books based on the film.

Quest for Camelot was released on VHS and DVD by Warner Home Video in the United States and Canada on October 13, 1998. The VHS edition includes a teaser trailer for Warner Bros. and Morgan Creek Productions' The King and I (1999) and the Tom and Jerry cartoon, "The Two Mouseketeers", while the DVD included several making of documentaries with interviews of the filmmakers and cast and a music video of "I Stand Alone". To help promote the home video release of the film, Warner Bros. partnered with Act II, American Express, Best Western Hotels, CoinStar, Continental Airlines, Smucker's, and UNICEF, which advertised its trick or treat donation boxes before Halloween arrived.

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 43% based on 30 reviews, with an average rating of 5.2/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Diminished by uneven animation and treacly songs, Quest for Camelot is an adventure that ought to be tossed back to the Lady in the Lake." On Metacritic, the film has an average score of 50 based on 22 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a B+ on a grade scale from A to F.

Owen Gleiberman, reviewing for Entertainment Weekly, wrote, "The images are playful and serviceably lush, but the story and characters might have come out of a screenwriting software program, and the songs (sung by Celine Dion and Steve Perry, among others) are Vegas pop wallpaper." David Kronke of the Los Angeles Times described the film as "formulaic" and wrote that it was "a nearly perfect reflection of troubling trends in animated features". He called Kayley "a standard issue spunky female heroine" and said that "Garrett's blindness is the one adventurous element to the film, but even it seems calculated; his lack of sight is hardly debilitating, yet still provides kids a lesson in acceptance." Critical of the story, animation, characters, and music, James Berardinelli of ReelViews wrote that the film was "dull, uninspired, and, worst of all, characterized by artwork that could charitably be called 'unimpressive. Stephen Holden of The New York Times wrote, "Coming on the heels of 20th Century Fox's lush but silly Anastasia (a much better film than this one), Quest for Camelot suggests that Disney still owns the artistic franchise on animated features." Kevin J. Harty, an editor of a collection of essays titled Cinema Arthuriana, says that the film is "slightly indebted to, rather than, as Warner publicity claims, actually based on" Chapman's novel. Peter Stack of the San Francisco Chronicle said that the film is "a spirited adventure with generous romantic and comic charms" that "aims to please a range of ages, with loopy gags, corny romance, an oversized villain and catchy tunes performed by Celine Dion and LeAnn Rimes, among others." Joe Leydon of Variety considered the film as a "lightweight but likable fantasy that offers a playfully feminist twist to Arthurian legends" and noted that the "animation, though not quite up to Disney standards, is impressive enough on its own terms to dazzle the eye and serve the story."

Quest for Camelot grossed $6 million on its opening weekend, ranking third behind The Horse Whisperer and Deep Impact. The film ultimately grossed $22.5 million during its theatrical run in North America. Cumulatively, the film grossed $38.1 million worldwide.

Prior to the release of the film, Warner Bros. had plans to make a stage adaptation of the film that would tour around to different renaissance fairs throughout the United States, as well as a nightly fireworks show for Six Flags Great Adventure. Both shows were designed by SLG Design & Creative Talent and Steve Gilliam. The touring aspect of the project was cancelled soon after the film's release due to poor box office performance and the tour's anticipated cost, but the nightly firework show did end up coming to fruition. Quest for Camelot Nights debuted at Six Flags Great Adventure in 1998, and ran through 2001. The show told the story of the film, with much of the film's main characters appearing as live characters in the show. The film's musical numbers were acted out with scenes from the film displayed with projections onto the show's "water curtains".

The Quest for Camelot Audio Action Adventure was a follow along audiobook based on the film. Released April 7, 1998, the interactive story features two new songs that were not included in the movie, Camelot and To Be a Knight. Initially announced in 1996, the audiobook was scheduled to be released October 1997, but was delayed until April 1998. The story was narrated by Val Bettin.

The first video game was titled Quest for Camelot and is an action adventure video game developed by Titus Interactive and published by Nintendo for the Game Boy Color in 1998, and later was added to the Nintendo Switch Online service on September 5, 2023. A Nintendo 64 version of the game was planned, but was scrapped due to the film's performance at the box office. The second video game was titled Quest for Camelot: Dragon Games is a computer game developed by Knowledge Adventure, it gives the player the ability to explore Camelot after the events of the film. In addition to exploring the world, the player gets to raise a dragon egg and watch it grow.