Work Text:
In the 1990s, emboldened by the success of Walt Disney Pictures with animated hits like The Little Mermaid and The Lion King, more and more studios made the big move of opening their own, in-house feature animation divisions. Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment had Amblimation before decamping with Jeffrey Katzenberg to DreamWorks SKG. Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox had their own shingles. For a period, knowing how to hold a pencil made you a hot commodity in Hollywood.
Waystar Studios was no different, officially announcing the founding of Waystar Studios Feature Animation in 1993. WSFA, as it was commonly known, released its first feature, the musical adventure The Lost Knight, in 1996 to strong box office returns and decent reviews. Unfortunately, the success was not to last. An age-old tale of studio meddling and changes at the top were enough to doom the studio and the division folded shortly after the release of its second – and final – film, The Starmaster in 1999.
Now for the first time, personalities from across WSFA tell the inside story of the studio’s quick rise and even faster descent. Executives and inbetweeners alike were keen to share their stories of the quest to topple Disney, the time the Roy children crashed the studio, and Connor Roy’s dubious producing credit on The Lost Knight.
How It Began: After the double-whammy of Disney’s The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast, and the latter’s nomination for the Best Picture Oscar, other studios were quick to realize that animation was serious business.
Jeff Grayson, Chairman, Waystar Studios (1988-1998): Animation was not a huge deal before the ‘90s. Disney would release one every few years, or you’d get a re-release of Snow White in the theaters every so often. But animation was expensive and time-consuming. Studios weren’t willing to take on that kind of investment.
Chris Helberg, President, WSFA: Before [WSFA], Waystar would occasionally pick up an independent animated movie for distribution in January and February, just so we could have something in theaters. It was after Beauty and the Beast and the Oscars that word got around that Fox and Warner were looking at opening animation studios. And our marching orders were to beat them to the punch.
Director Gary Alcem was a Walt Disney Feature Amimation alum who left the studio during the troubled production of The Black Cauldron. Since then, he had made some moderately successful films under his own studio, including The Cat’s Meow and The Nightingale.
Gary Alcem, Head of Creative, WSFA: During Black Cauldron, there was a group of us who were just fed up with the higher-ups. It was when Tim [Burton]’s character designs were axed, I said that’s enough. I walked. This wasn’t why I got into animation. I did a few films independently and had a good time, but when Waystar came to me, and I feel kind of like a sell-out saying this, but I was ready to go back to a real studio. I had people I wanted to keep on payroll. Waystar was the way to get them paid.
Helberg: Gary was the kind of guy we wanted. Fox was already circling [Don] Bluth, Spielberg had his guys, and Gary had that kind of “little guy” spirit we were looking for. A creative.
Frank Vernon, Chief Operating Officer, Waystar Royco: I was overseeing Waystar Studios at the time and we specifically wanted someone who could deliver on-time and on-budget. Gary was that guy.
Alcem: I had experience working with small budgets, more out of necessity. When more investors got involved, there were more production notes. You know, make this character something we can make a toy out of and whatnot.
Helberg: Gary had a more punk-rock sensibility than the other animation guys. We had the feeling we could do something different with him at the helm.
A multi-million dollar purpose-built studio opened in Burbank in late 1993. Through 1994, WSFA began to grow its staff and its first production, the medieval musical The Lost Knight, was underway. Alcem shared directing duties with a rookie director, Kelly McGinnis.
Kelly McGinnis, Director: It was the biggest thing I had done thus far. I was out of my depth, a little.
Alcem: I would have preferred to have gone it alone. But at the same time, this wasn’t my studio anymore.
Grayson: I was a big champion of WSFA. I was visiting their facilities in Burbank every week. I was so excited about what they were doing there.
Family Affairs: It’s almost trite to say Waystar Royco is a family business. WSFA was no exception, with Logan Roy and his children – Connor, Kendall, Roman and Siobhan – all getting involved in one way or another.
McGinnis: Logan visited the studio once.
Allie Shah, Character Animator: Logan visiting was one of the weirder moments of my career. I was fresh out of CalArts. I remember he stood over my desk, and I was drawing [The Lost Knight character] Guindoline. And he just said “She’s pretty,” and walked away. It was creepy.
Ken Gagliani, Inbetweener: The mood was really “Pretend you’re working really hard, even if you aren’t.”
Alcem: He didn’t give a shit about what we were doing. Hell, Frank tried to give Connor [Roy] a position at WSFA. He didn’t care. Never showed up.
Vernon: Connor did do some work on The Lost Knight.
McGinnis: I never once saw Connor at the Burbank lot. Or at the meetings with the heads in Studio City.
The oldest Roy son received a producer credit on The Lost Knight.
Jim Cruz, Character Animator: That producing credit it such bullshit. I remember seeing that and thinking “What the fuck? This guy has no idea this film exists.”
Len Stuart, Producer: As far as I can recall, we never got any input from Connor.
[Editor’s Note: When asked for comment, Connor Roy’s representatives provided the following statement –
“Connor Roy has fond memories of working with the Waystar Studios Feature Animation team and is proud of the work they were all able to accomplish. Connor brings this teambuilding experience with him as he embarks on his next great venture: running for President of the United States of America.”]
Alcem: The production was all in all pretty smooth. It was almost too good, like when was the other shoe gonna drop?
Stuart: Waystar was very bullish about cross-promotion. They wanted to use all their resources, ATN, the parks, to promote this movie.
McGinnis: I was attending meetings with Hasbro, looking at toy designs, getting dialed in on calls with the people at Brightstar [Parks]. It was all very surreal.
Alcem: I felt like I was a massive sell-out going to those meetings. But the money was very good.
Jenny Tarses, Clean-Up Animation: They involved the younger Roy kids [Kendall, Roman and Siobhan]. It was very weird.
McGinnis: The kids were at the premiere, and they hosted some behind-the-scenes special that aired on ATN.
Cruz: The day the kids came into the studio, fucking Christ.
Tarses: They were in to film a making-of thing for the network. It was super scripted, really cheesy, obnoxious sound effects. They just let the kids run wild around the studio and we had to pretend to work and answer any questions the kids asked for the camera. It was really annoying, because we were actually trying to work on [our next film].
Cruz: Roman was a little asshole.
[Editor’s Note: The ATN special “An Inside Look at The Lost Knight” was indeed hosted by Kendall, Roman and Siobhan Roy. It is available, albeit in low quality, on YouTube, and includes a scene where Kendall and Roman fight each other with plastic swords.]
Gagliani: The ATN special was pretty embarrassing for us. I guess Logan wanted to give his kids something.
Cruz: Roman stole my pens. I just sat at my desk after they had left and my pens were all gone.
A Successful Start: The Lost Knight premiered on July 26, 1996 to second place at the box office. Reviews called it a “passable musical romp.” It made a total of $140 million at the global box office.
Alcem: The premiere was a really splashy thing. It was at the Chinese Theater. They got some performers from Brightstar in Buena Park to show up as the main characters from the film.
Shah: None of the animators were at the premiere.
Cruz: I saw that Connor was there. That pissed me off a little.
Stuart: There was a lot of tie-in with Brightstar Parks. We kind of set the precedent for IP in the parks. Like, whenever you see the Turkey in the parks, that was us.
McGinnis: I was at one of the Brightstar locations a year or two ago with my kids and was like “Man, I wonder if any of our movie is left here?”
Alcem: I think there’s still a Lost Knight themed restaurant at Brightstar Buffalo.
The Lost Knight came up empty handed come awards season. While the producers weren’t expecting any Best Picture nominations – and Best Animated Feature categories some years away – there were high hopes for the end credits song.
Mary Schifferin, Producer: All these animated movies had these end credit songs, these easy listening pop ballads. We knew we had to have one to get a good shot at any awards.
Stuart: We ended up with Karey Cade. First, we wanted Whitney [Houston]. Then Mariah [Carey]. They both declined. Two years later, and they’re both doing Prince of Egypt for Katzenberg.
Schifferin: I was a fan of Karey. I think she did a good job.
“You Are Stronger (Theme from “The Lost Knight”),” penned by Diane Warren, was a moderate hit, peaking at number three on the Billboard Hot 100. It received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Song Written for Visual Media.
Tarses: I’ll sing “You Are Stronger” at karaoke sometimes. It’s a good song.
Alcem: I think the song was stupid. Didn’t fit with the spirit of the movie at all. Never been a fan of Diane Warren, personally.
A Fast Decline: By the time production was fully underway on WSFA’s next film, The Starmaster, the studio’s biggest champion was out and computer animation was on its way in.
Grayson: Waystar Studios fired me in ’98. It hurt, because I knew that whoever they chose to replace me was not going to care about the animation division like I did.
Alcem: Things were changing. Toy Story came out a year before The Lost Knight. And people had been whispering about Toy Story for years, that Disney was doing this computer movie with Steve Jobs, and it sounded like a joke.
Helberg: You have to understand, Steve Jobs was not like, Steve Jobs at that time. This was not iPod Steve Jobs. Everyone was sure Toy Story was going to be an expensive failure. Nobody even thought computer animation would be any good.
Stuart: The weekend Toy Story opened, I remember reading the box office reports and thinking “We’re cooked.” They had just blown the lid off computer animation. The goalposts had shifted.
Alcem: After Jeff was let go, the calls from the higher-ups for Starmaster was “more computer stuff.” They didn’t realize that we weren’t trained for computer animation.
Cruz: The studio cared about us, but they didn’t care about us, you know? I think they saw animation as easy money. They saw what Disney was doing and thought it was simple.
Alcem: We ended up putting some computer stuff in there, since they insisted. But it was expensive and looked like shit.
McGinnis: I wasn’t asked to direct Starmaster, which was a bit disappointing. But at the same time, it feels like I dodged a bullet.
Schifferin: Starmaster just didn’t work.
The Starmaster opened to little fanfare in 1999. Shortly after, Waystar Studios announced the closure of WSFA.
Helberg: We lost our champion in Jeff Grayson. He generally let us do what we wanted on the first film. When he left, it became about the numbers, getting the four quadrants.
Vernon: Feature Animation wasn’t profitable. Closing it was a difficult decision, but the right one.
Alcem: I just lost my energy after that. Years of being independent took it out of me, then Starmaster killed any of the passion I had left in me.
A Complicated Legacy: Animation sat dormant at Waystar Studios until 2010, when Waystar Studios Europe opened a studio focused on computer animation. Today, Waystar Studios Animation, as it is now known, is headed by Amir Khoury, son of Logan Roy’s wife, Marcia.
Some of WSFA’s original Burbank staff now work at the European outpost. Most of them have found work elsewhere.
Tarses: I was pretty done with it all after Starmaster. And when I found out Logan’s stepson is running the show, I know I made the right choice. I’ve had enough of the Roy kids.
Cruz: I had to pivot. Traditional animation fell out of favor pretty quickly after we shut down. So when I saw Waystar was getting back in it in Europe, I thought “What the hell?” Ireland is pretty cool. EuroBrightstar is fun.
Shah: I’m still there. I know we’re not making high art, but The Biggest Turkey in the World made a shit-ton of money. That turkey is keeping the lights on for us.
Gagliani: I’ve been everywhere. I was at Waystar, then Warner for a bit, Sony once I pivoted to CGI. At Waystar, there was a real can-do attitude. Gary made us feel like we were the little guys, while the rest of Waystar was making the “real” movies. Near the end it turned into a huge mess, but those early days were great.
Tarses: The Lost Knight is on Netflix and my nephew really loves it. I get to tell my nephew I worked on their favorite movie. That’s pretty cool.
[Editor’s Note: Logan Roy, Kendall Roy, Roman Roy, Siobhan Roy and Amir Khoury all declined to be interviewed for this story.]