The Thief and The Cobbler - Restoration Attempts

Restoration Attempts

Several low-quality video copies of Richard Williams' workprint have been shared among animation fans and professionals. The problem in creating a high-quality restoration is that after the Completion Bond Company had finished the film, many scenes by Williams that were removed disappeared – many of these had fallen into the hands of private parties. Before losing control of the film, Williams had originally kept all artwork safe in a fireproof basement. Additionally, there are legal problems with Miramax.

At the 2000 Annecy Festival, Williams showed Walt Disney Feature Animation head Roy E. Disney a faded workprint of The Thief, which Disney liked. With William's full support, Roy Disney began a project to restore The Thief and the Cobbler to as close to Williams' original intent as possible. He sought out original pencil tests and completed footage, much of which was by this time in the possession of various animators and film collectors. The restored work would have been released on a special DVD and given a limited run in theatres once finished. Roy Disney left the Walt Disney Company in November 2003, and the Thief and the Cobbler restoration project was put on hold.

In 2006, a filmmaker, artist, and fan of Williams' work named Garrett Gilchrist created a non-profit fan restoration of William's workprint, named The Thief and the Cobbler: The Recobbled Cut. It was done in as high quality as possible by combining available sources, such as a heavily compressed Audio Video Interleave copy (taken from a high quality PAL VHS copy) of Williams' workprint that was posted anonymously on eMule and better-quality footage from a Japanese widescreen DVD copy of Arabian Knight. This edit was much supported by numerous people who had worked on the film (with the exception of Richard Williams himself, who wishes not to have anything to do with the film any more), including Roy Naisbitt, Alex Williams, Andreas Wessel-Therhorn, Tony White, Holger Leihe, Steve Evangelatos, Greg Duffell, Jerry Verschoor and Beth Hannan, many of whom lent rare material for the project. Some minor changes were made to "make it feel more like a finished film", like adding more music and replacing storyboards with some of Fred Calvert's animation. This edit gained positive reviews on the Internet. Twitch Film called it "the best and most important 'fan edit' ever made".

The Recobbled Cut has been revised several times with better-quality footage, with a "Mark 2" version released in 2006 (which incorporated parts of Fred Calvert's animation from a timecoded widescreen VHS version of The Princess and the Cobbler), a "Mark 3" version released in 2008 (which incorporated 21 minutes of 49 minutes of rare 35mm film of scenes not in the released version that were taken from Jean MacCurdy's trash at Warner Bros. by an animator), and a "Mark 4" version planned for 2013. This version will incorporate materials donated by animator Simon Maddocks (pencil tests of the swoop around the Golden City and part of the War Machine sequence where enormous iron kills soldiers, both animated by Maddocks, pencil and colour tests of sequences not present in any previous version, such as the Thief struggling with the balls on the tightrope; deleted scenes of the Brigands and a high quality PAL VHS copy of Williams' workprint), 14 minutes of 35mm film bought from eBay (part of it from a German trailer that was shown before UK screenings of Highlander II: The Quickening), and a VHS tape made by Fred Calvert when he started production on The Princess and the Cobbler that contains shots not in the released version. The 35mm footage has been restored in high definition and all materials are undergoing editing by Gilchrist for consistency. Animator Andreas Wessel-Therhorn was commissioned to draw new material for the hands at the beginning of the film.