Following the Leader

Peter Pan is a 1953 American animated adventure fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by RKO Radio Pictures. Based on J. M. Barrie's 1904 play of the same name, the film was directed by Hamilton Luske, Clyde Geronimi, and Wilfred Jackson. Featuring the voices of Bobby Driscoll, Kathryn Beaumont, Hans Conried, Bill Thompson, Heather Angel, Paul Collins, Tommy Luske, Candy Candido, Tom Conway, Roland Dupree and Don Barclay, the film's plot follows Wendy Darling and her two brothers, who meet the eternally-young Peter Pan and travel with him to the island of Never Land to stay young, where they also have to face Peter's archenemy, Captain Hook. In 1935, Walt Disney began considering plans to adapt Barrie's play into an animated feature. He purchased the film rights from Paramount Pictures in 1938, and began preliminary development in the next year. However, following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Disney shelved the project when his studio was contracted by the United States government to produce training and war propaganda films. The project sat idle in development for the rest of the decade until it experienced a turnaround in 1949. To assist the animators, live-action reference footage was shot with actors on soundstages. It also marked the last Disney film in which all nine members of Disney's Nine Old Men worked together as directing animators. Peter Pan was released on February 5, 1953, becoming the final Disney animated feature released through RKO before Disney founded his own distribution company. The film was entered into the 1953 Cannes Film Festival, Upon its release, the film earned positive reviews from film critics and was a box office success. Its representation of the Native Americans received retrospective criticism. A sequel, titled Return to Never Land, was released in 2002, and a series of direct-to-DVD prequels focusing on Tinker Bell began in 2008. A live-action adaptation of the film was released on Disney+ in 2023.