Film to Capture Sting's Disney Fiasco

Sting's wife Trudi Styler has chronicled her husband's stormy relationship with Disney pictures in a documentary ominously titled Sweatbox, due to be released next year.

The documentary covers Disney's hiring of the former Police-man along with collaborator David Hartley to pen six songs for an animated musical comedy that was initially titled "Kingdom of the Sun," a retelling of Mark Twain's story The Prince and the Pauper set in an ancient Incan civilization. After Sting delivered the songs, he was dismayed to find that the production had undergone major surgery. Not only was the film retitled The Emperor's New Groove, but most of Sting's songs did not fit the new plot line, so Disney junked them including "One Day She'll Love Me," Sting's duet with singer Shawn Colvin."

"At first I was angry and perturbed. Then I wanted some vengeance," the Grammy-winning musician told Reuters. "We couldn't use the songs in this new film because the characters they were written for didn't exist anymore." Sting and Hartley were forced back to the drawing board to craft two new songs, though Disney did allow three of the six axed songs to appear on the soundtrack album, including a dance number called "Walk the Llama Llama."

The dispute between Sting and Disney was caught in part by Styler, who is no stranger to film, having produced five feature films, including Guy Ritchie's Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and his about-to-be-released Snatch. Sweatbox will feature some of the material that was nixed from the Disney production.

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Song Stories

“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell | 1974

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.

More Song Stories entries »

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