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Watch: Early Test Footage of an Unmade 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit?'

by Ethan Anderton
September 8, 2014
Source: Thief Archive

Before audiences saw Who Framed Roger Rabbit? in 1988, Walt Disney Productions had tried to make the film several years earlier after initially getting the rights to Gary K. Wolf's novel on which the film is based. In fact, animation director Darrell Van Citters actually shot some test footage, but not with Bob Hoskins as Eddie Valiant and Charles Fleischer as the voice of Roger Rabbit. Instead, it was Pee-Wee Herman star Paul Reubens (though he wasn't known as that character yet) voicing the titular rabbit with Peter Renaday and Mike Gabriel as the human detective. Now that footage has surfaced. Watch below!

Here's the early 1980s test footage from the first attempt to make Who Framed Roger Rabbit?:

The footage above was shown on The Disney Channel in 1983 on a program called "Disney Studio Showcase" but it was never seen again. Thankfully, Thief Archive (via SlashFilm) has unearthed the footage and posted it online for us to watch. As you can see, the segment from the show goes behind the scenes of the unmade film with words from animator Mike Giamo and producer Marc Sturdivant. Also, that's Russi Taylor as Jessica Rabbit, made out to be the villain. Obviously, a lot of stuff changed between this test footage and the film we saw, but there are elements that clearly stuck around for Robert Zemeckis' version. If you want to know even more about the early unmade version of the film, hit up OrangeCow.org right here. Cool stuff?

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