Lucasfilm didn’t publicly confirm the Monkey Island film’s existence until 2011. That was when the Monkey Island Special Edition Collection came out, containing storyboards of the film that the project lead for these games, Craig Derrick, had located and cleared for release.

In the years since, many questions about the film have lingered. Who was involved? How far did it get to completion? Why was it canceled? Recently, we were put in contact with the director of this long-forgotten project, David Carson, who had previously never commented publicly on his connection to the film. Carson had been a visual artist at ILM for many decades, working on films such Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, The Goonies, and Jurassic Park, before becoming part of the digital story department tasked with developing concepts and treatments for computer-animated features in the late ’90s. Together with former members of ILM, he gave us new insight into the making of the Monkey Island film.

Frankenstein and the Wolfman

When Carson talks about Monkey Island, he begins with the tale of another canceled ILM project: Frankenstein and the Wolfman. 

“Doug Norby, the president of Lucasfilm, feared what might happen if computers were increasingly used to create visual effects,” Carson tells us. “Computers were constantly becoming more powerful but cheaper. He feared a future where small groups of people with modest amounts of money could use computers to create effects similar to what ILM was currently providing, but at far less cost. And he feared that the studios would gladly hire them.”

The first result of this was Frankenstein and the Wolfman, a collaboration between Universal and ILM that hoped to revive Universal’s horror properties of the 1930s. There were two directors: Carson was attached to co-direct the project for ILM, with Universal Pictures chairman Casey Silver selecting Tremors writer Brent Maddock to be Universal’s representative. Over the next few years, the team produced multiple scripts, as well as animatics and artwork from those who would later be involved with Monkey Island’s film adaptation. But the story was canceled before it ever made it to the screen, with the main problem being Universal’s approval. 

During development on the project, there had been a shake-up at Universal, with Silver resigning after the failure of Babe: Pig in the City at the box office. The new heads of production at the studio then conducted a review of the project, the outcome being that Universal removed Maddock from it, believing his script with Tremors collaborator S.S. Wilson to be “too dark.” 

“I was just getting no feedback from Universal,” Carson says. “We would have shots in progress. We would have models of the creatures in progress, and there was nobody to show them to, nobody to approve them, and a sense of ‘Is this all going to be disapproved later?’ I just felt like the film needed somebody who was actually in charge and who had the power to make decisions. And I didn’t feel like I had that power.”

“I met with Stephen Sommers a couple of times,” says story artist Tony Stacchi, who worked on Frankenstein and the Wolfman and Monkey Island at ILM. “He had a very different vision. So he came in and he gave his thoughts. But none of his thoughts really jived with what Dave wanted to do. He was a really nice guy, but he was very into modernizing the myth and not being [beholden] at all to the old Universal thing. [...] So [Universal] were trying to find somebody to sort of take the ball and go forward with it and own it, and I don’t think he was interested until after he finished [The Mummy Returns].”

Carson’s departure turned out to be the silver bullet for Frankenstein and the Wolfman, which was canceled only a couple of months later. But ILM was not done with feature animation just yet.

Guybrush Threepwood, mighty pirate

During this conversation, Carson asked his son whether he thought Monkey Island might make a good feature film, and his son enthusiastically said it would. Then, little more than a week later, Carson was in Morris’ office at ILM talking about his idea for a film about grog, ghouls, and the adventures of a wannabe pirate named Guybrush Threepwood. Morris was unfamiliar with the games, but he suggested taking the idea to Amblin Entertainment, Steven Spielberg’s production company. 

From high above, we watch as the boat heads out into deeper waters and stronger waves. The Monkey Island theme music starts, and the head-credits roll. In a series of cuts, the small boat makes its way to Melee Island, and in the final shot, we see the supply boat pulling away from a sandy beach at dusk. On shore, Guybrush happily waves to the uncaring crewmen. He turns and begins to make his way up a steep winding trail into the cliffs above. Night has fully fallen when we cut back to a wide establishing shot of Melee Island, and the theme music ends.

The next scene segues into the opening of the first game, with Guybrush standing on the cliffs overlooking Melée Island, where he meets an old lookout who directs him to the SCUMM Bar.

Other changes from the game in this version of the script include whittling down the three trials Guybrush must complete in order to become a pirate to just one. In addition, the scrapes with the local pirates on Melée Island are condensed into a single fight with the villain LeChuck’s undead skeleton crew. And Murray the Talking Skull makes an appearance, despite not being introduced in the games until the opening of the third entry in the series. Murray figures into the final act of this script, where he works together with the island castaway Herman Toothrot and a band of wild monkeys to rescue Guybrush from being thrown into a river of lava from LeChuck’s ship. 

Rosen and Leberecht’s treatment deviated even further from the game. It followed Guybrush searching for the treasure of Monkey Island in order to pay his union fees and become a mighty pirate. As he leaves the SCUMM Bar, he bumps into Elaine Marley at the docks on Melee Island, and the two begin to talk. Marley is setting off to find her younger brother Kitt, who was shipwrecked on Monkey Island, and Guybrush needs a ship to take him to the treasure. Elaine is reluctant at first, but then some henchmen appear, on orders from LeChuck, who has been tracking Elaine to make her his undead bride. The two escape, and the rest of the film follows Guybrush and Elaine exploring Monkey Island and evading LeChuck and his crew: They find Kitt among a tribe of monkeys, Elaine is kidnapped, and Guybrush defeats LeChuck, dousing the pirate in molten lava. This was the script that ILM pitched to Spielberg.

“The meeting ended the way you want those meetings to end,” Rosen says. “It was like shaking hands, like, Let’s make the movie. I remember very clearly Dave Carson, as we were getting back in the car, goes, ‘You can trace the decline of your entire career from this moment. It’s never going to get better than Steven Spielberg shaking your hand.’”

Asked who he had in mind for the voice of the characters, Carson says, “We were far from voice casting on Monkey, but I would have definitely considered those who voiced the characters in the games.” That would’ve been Dominic Armato and Earl Boen, who voiced Guybrush and LeChuck, respectively, in 1997’s The Curse of Monkey Island, the first Monkey Island game with voice acting.

Charting a new course 

The plot changed significantly as the project progressed, with Carson and the two writers working with the rest of ILM’s story department to develop the treatment further. This story group included Steve Purcell, the creator of adventure game series Sam & Max, who was a background artist and collaborator on the first two Monkey Island games, as well as storyboard artists such as Delia Gosman, Garett Sheldrew, and Tony Stacchi. Around this time, other LucasArts employees also started to hear news of a Monkey Island film.

“Sadly, I have only vague, whispery memories of rumors of a Monkey Island movie over at ILM,” says Escape from Monkey Island co-director Mike Stemmle. “I’d be hard-pressed to even recall when I heard such rumors. I do remember seeing some Steve Purcell concept art at one point or another, but that’s about it.”

“In retrospect, there should have been a lot more interaction,” Rosen says of the relationship between his team and the game developers at LucasArts. “They know this world. They love this world. They were deeply steeped in Monkey Island, and we were Hollywood types. We were dicks. We were taking their idea and making a movie of it and we weren’t including them. That’s stupid. That’s not how anything should be done. When you are using source material and you have access to those people, that’s dumb that we didn’t do that.”

“I think Steve Purcell was a little frustrated with me, because I was like, ‘I don’t play video games at all, but I love pirates,’” says Stacchi. “I like Defoe and Robert Louis Stevenson, so I was really into the pirate thing. [...] But I thought everything that I learned and read, and the little I played of the game, I thought was super clever, taking from all that stuff.”

Under this story group, the film changed to an original story about the villain LeChuck trying to unite all pirates, living and dead, under a single, terrifying flag. In this version of the story, Guybrush is portrayed as a Chum-Bait fisherman, living with his pet monkey sidekick, Sam. Much like in the earlier scripts, it’s his dream to become a mighty pirate, so when LeChuck shows up at the local SCUMM Bar recruiting pirates for his ship, Guybrush volunteers to join and accidentally becomes embroiled in a plot involving dancing monkeys, blood rituals, and pirate armadas. 

“That’s the part that really resonated with me — to have such a blinkered character who really wants something,” says Stacchi. “That’s what I got out of it. And you read the Defoe book on pirates, and that stuff is sort of in there. There are all these interesting stories about these guys who were straight-up thugs who turned into pirates, but then there’s all these noblemen who became pirates [too]. And that was Guybrush in a fun, cartoony nutshell.”  

The Pirates of the Caribbean ‘connection’

Two of the most pervasive myths about the Monkey Island film are that Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio were writers on the project and that they later recycled many of the elements from the unfinished film for their Pirates of the Caribbean movies. The truth, however, is much less straightforward.

“They toured ILM and came over to the story group’s offices,” says Carson. “We talked with them about films they had developed, and we showed them the artwork we were working on for Monkey Island. What we didn’t know was at that time Ted and Terry were developing a script for Disney based on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland. They weren’t the first writers to tackle this assignment. Disney had, several times in the past, assigned writers to develop a script based on their ride, but no one had achieved a script that the studio put into production.” 

Tony Stacchi adds, “We pitched them Monkey Island, which had artwork for every sequence and there was artwork for all the beats. [...] All I remember from their response was like, ‘Look, you love pirate movies, we love pirate movies, nobody in Hollywood is going to make a pirate movie.’ [...] Later, [when they announced Pirates of the Caribbean] I remember talking to Jim Morris about it and saying, ‘Hey, those guys are making a pirate movie, and they told us that nobody would make a pirate movie.’ And Jim went, ‘Yep, and we have all the special effects, so it’s a win-win.” ILM went on to win the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest in 2006.

But wasn’t the Monkey Island game itself inspired by the Pirates of the Caribbean ride? I recall that after the first movie came out, someone said we ripped off the “prisoners calling dog with keys” from the game.

Terry Rossio waded in not long afterward, addressing other comparisons people were making between Monkey Island’s Voodoo Lady and Tia Dalma, a character introduced in the second Pirates of the Caribbean film:

Despite these protestations, the rumor has refused to die, with fans and even some former members of LucasArts bringing it up when referring to the canceled Monkey Island film. Asked what he thinks about this, Carson makes it clear he doesn’t believe that the visit the writers paid to the studio had any great influence on Pirates of the Caribbean and its future success as a film franchise. Instead, he stresses how much he admires the writers and what they accomplished with the character of Jack Sparrow, before talking about the joy of getting to meet them and how important their advice was for learning the basics of screenwriting and story structure. 

“Their website in those days — we were learning anything we could about story structure,” says Carson. “At least, I remember reading it all the time. I liked what they had to say, and it was great meeting them.” He goes on to echo Elliott’s sentiment: “I also don’t think it really matters. The games were inspired by the rides, so if a movie based on the ride is inspired by the games, it all seems like good fun to me.” 

Monkey business

LucasArts released the storyboards for this later version of the film in 2011, as part of the Monkey Island Special Edition Collection, a retail package containing the modern remakes of the first two Monkey Island games. These storyboards primarily show the art of Tony Stacchi and Steve Purcell, with some additional pieces from Garett Sheldrew, Delia Gosman, and David Carson. But arriving at this story layout had been difficult for the team. 

“[Developing the story this far] did not go as smoothly as I would have hoped,” says Carson. “Story development is often contentious, and it was rare that we all saw things the same way. But we eventually managed to hash out a story that was a good start. The main character [Guybrush Threepwood] was one of the biggest challenges. While his character made a great avatar for the player of the game, it was harder to get a lock on who he was as the hero of the film [because he’s not typically heroic and much of his background is left unexplored].”

Beyond the problems of adaptation, there were also more troubling concerns. This included a second meeting with Spielberg. Jim Morris, Patty Blau, Rosen, and Tom Bertino (who was going to act as animation supervisor) were all present at this meeting. 

“We gathered in Steven’s office, and the first thing he said was that we shouldn’t have the main characters be human,” Carson says. “Instead, he suggested we should make the movie be about the monkeys on Monkey Island. Everyone just nodded, but my heart stopped. What the heck? We had worked for several weeks on a story that was based on the charm and humor of the games, and Steven wanted to throw all that out and make some new story about monkeys? I was completely confused.

“The next week I met with Jim at ILM and told him I didn’t know where to go with the project,” Carson continues. “I didn’t have a script where the monkeys were the main characters, and I didn’t really believe that Steven would be interested in financing such a movie. Certainly, people who came to see the film because of their love for the games would be disappointed. And it was clear Steven wasn’t ready to finance a film based on our current story.”

“The [Monkey Island] story was in a good place [...] so we just had an open season on pitching ideas,” says Rosen. “I had a heist movie that I pitched and developed into a beautiful pitch deck. We had a Tintin project. We just had a really great sort of bench of things.”

“We fell into a routine,” Carson says. “We would develop potential story ideas [for different animated feature films] and pitch them to each other once a week. The best ones would be fleshed out with more detail and some art, and once a month, those would get pitched to the ‘story advisory group.’ We had a number of stories that I think showed promise. I developed a story based on the Arabian Nights. There was a story that involved a number of rats that escape from a lab and meet up with rats living in the streets of New York. There was an idea for a story based on The Five Chinese Brothers. I even pitched A Princess of Mars as an idea. Any of these could arguably be developed into an entertaining film, but there was never an idea that the entire advisory group agreed was a surefire hit.”

In 2001, the story department was dismantled and digital feature development continued under a new department called LFL Animation (Lucasfilm Ltd. Animation). Some continued to work under this new department, though many others departed to pursue other opportunities. Among them was Carson, who left Lucasfilm and ILM for the chance to work as an art director on a number of James Bond games for Electronic Arts. LFL Animation continued developing feature projects until 2005, but the Curse of Monkey Island film slowly passed into legend among fans of the game. 

Six years later, ILM finally released its first digital feature, Rango, in 2011, in collaboration with a number of other studios. Ironically, Pirates of the Caribbean series director Gore Verbinski helmed the film.

Correction: At the end of this story, we originally suggested that digital feature development stopped at LucasFilm in 2001. We have updated the story to note that it moved to a new department called LFL Animation.