The Hunchback of Notre Dame Festival of Fun New Orleans Premiere (June 19, 1996)

To top the Pocahontas premiere in Central Park, the Walt Disney Company set out to do an even bigger event for the release of their next animated feature, The Hunchback of Notre Dame. This time they trucked many of their parade floats and performers from their American theme parks to New Orleans and held a grand gala including a parade and an epic premiere at the New Orleans Superdome. This would mark the first time Disney held a parade outside of one of their parks. There would be more to come. Mayor Ray Nagin was on hand for the festivities, decreeing the date as Hunchback of Notre Dame Day. Nagin would later be convicted on 20 counts of Federal Bribery, Honest Services Wire Fraud, Money Laundering, Conspiracy, and Tax Charges after an investigation on the failures of the city’s infrastructure during Hurricane Katrina. Incidentally, Disney's relationship with New Orleans that would result in the Princess & the Frog begins with this event.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame struggled to make 100 million at the box office. Ever since Beauty & the Beast received an Academy Award Nomination for Best Picture, there was an attempt to tailor make an Oscar winner. Hunchback is one of those films. While some blame the film’s bait and switch marketing campaign that focused on the party and comedy aspects of a story that was in reality a serious drama, there were other factors at play too. In 1996 several Christian groups began a boycotts against the Walt Disney Company over some of the perceived anti-Christian policies the company embraced. This is never cited in animation history books or articles but it’s a fact that the Disney animated films began to financially tank when this boycott started and only slightly rebounded after it was lifted.

Some claimed that Walt Disney would have never made as serious of a film as the Hunchback of Notre Dame but the tone of the story was very much in keeping with some of his proposed animated films during the 1940’s when he was pushing the boundaries of animation. Because of the financial failures of his early animated features, Walt pulled back. One of his dream projects was to do a serious in tone animated feature based on the Song of Hiawatha.

Hunchback is a film worth seeing as a mature tale of where animation can go but it’s never enjoyed the classic status of the animated features from the early 90’s. Then CEO Michael Eisner deeply connected with this film and tried to launch a live action musical adaptation before he left the studio. Those additional songs make up a stage production that premiered in Germany a few years after the film.

This video includes the Disney Channel coverage of The Hunchback of Notre Dame Festival of Fun Parade and stage show. The stage show includes a host of Walt Disney animation stars performing the songs they had sang in the animated features. Other cable stations and broadcast networks also covered the event. We offer this video to demonstration just how popular these major Disney animated feature films were in the 90’s.

Original air date June 19, 1996

Posted for historical purposes. This channel is not affiliated with the Walt Disney Company.