What was Tim Burton’s first Disney movie? Filmmaker likens network to ‘horrible big circus’ during conference

Well-known filmmaker Tim Burton spoke up about his relationship with Disney at a press conference in France on Saturday, October 22, 2022. Burton has been a part of Disney for a long time and has produced and directed movies like The Nightmare Before Christmas, Alice in Wonderland, and more.

Tim Burton's most recent collaboration with Disney was the 2019 release Dumbo. He stated that Dumbo could be his final project with the studio due to the time required to complete it. He added:

“The thing about ‘Dumbo’, is that’s why I think my days with Disney are done, I realized that I was Dumbo, that I was working in this horrible big circus and I needed to escape. That movie is quite autobiographical at a certain level.”

When asked about Disney's plans for Marvel and Star Wars, Burton stated that he is not interested in making a Marvel film. He claimed that it had to be highly homogenized and consolidated, and that he could handle a single universe rather than multiple universes.

Tim Burton has previously criticized Warner Bros. for replacing him as Batman's director. He claimed that the studio described his two Batman films as "too dark." He at that time had said:

“But then I was like, ‘Wait a minute. Okay. Hold on a second here. You complain about me, I’m too weird, I’m too dark, and then you put n***les on the costume? Go f**k yourself.’ Seriously. So, yeah, I think that’s why I didn’t end up [doing a third film].”

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Tim Burton started his journey at Disney with Vincent

Tim Burton began his collaboration on Disney with a short film titled Vincent (Image via Sylvain Lefevre/Getty Images)

As mentioned earlier, Tim Burton has been associated with Disney since the beginning of his career. Burton began his journey with the studio back in 1982 with a stop-motion short horror film, Vincent.

Produced by Rick Heinrichs, the film was narrated by actor Vincent Price, who has been an idol and inspiration for Burton. The main plot revolved around a 7-year-old boy named Vincent Malloy, who experimented on his dog Abercrombie in order to create a zombie dog.

Vincent is drawn to Edgar Allen Poe's stories. His disconnection from reality while reading them leads to delusions that he is a tortured artist and mad scientist who has lost the woman he loves, resembling a few lines from Edgar Allan Poe's poem, The Raven.

Vincent is terrified of being tortured by everything going on in his imaginary world near the end, mentioning The Raven as he falls to the floor, believing he is dead.

Burton was initially a conceptual artist at Walt Disney Productions and his skills were loved by executive Julie Hickson and Head of Creative Development Tom Wilhite. Julie and Tom offered $60,000 to create an adaptation of Burton's poem, which he had originally planned to adapt into a children's short storybook.

Vincent was released for two weeks at a Los Angeles cinema and was a recipient of several accolades at film festivals in London, Chicago, and Seattle. It also won two awards in Chicago and the Critics’ Prize at the Annecy Film Festival in France.

Post that, Tim Burton became associated with Disney, working on projects like The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach, Alice in Wonderland, Frankenweenie, and more.