Revealed: The Three Things BANNED From Disney Movies

If you want to make a movie for Disney, there are certain things you should know.

And David Lowery, who’s just written and directed the remake of ‘Pete’s Dragon’ for the House of Mouse, has spilled the three things that are banned.

And by banned, we mean ‘in the contract’ banned.

They are, in no particular order; smoking, beheading and impalement.

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“Those are literally the three things you are not allowed to put into a Disney film,” he said in an interview with Ain’t It Cool News.

“They literally have those words in the contract as things you’re not allowed to do.”

“Maybe if you do all three, you can get away with it,” he joked.

Lowery is helming Disney’s remake of ‘Peter Pan’ next, but he added that he would draw the line at working on a remake of ‘Pinocchio’, perhaps because of the smoking ban.

“The scene in that movie that had the biggest impact to me was Pinocchio smoking a cigar and turning red,” he said.

Indeed, Disney has not always had a non-smoking policy.

Pinocchio is given the cigar when he arrives at the deeply sinister Pleasure Island, while Cruella De Vil was rarely seen without a tab on.

There’s also smoking seen in ‘Aladdin’, ‘Alice In Wonderland’, ‘Peter Pan’, ‘Dumbo’, and ‘Hercules’.

Disney outlawed smoking in its films completely in March last year, in all of its productions up to PG-13, including output from spin-off studios Marvel, Lucasfilm and Pixar.

“We are extending our policy to prohibit smoking in movies across the board,” said Disney boss Bob Iger, adding that there might be some wriggle room for historical characters where necessary.

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“For instance, we’ve been doing a movie on Abraham Lincoln, he was a smoker, and we would consider that acceptable.

“But in terms of any new characters that are created for any of those films, under any of those labels, we will absolutely prohibit smoking in any of those films.”

Impaling, meanwhile, was seen for the last time in ‘The Little Mermaid’ (which also features smoking) in 1989, when the villainous Ursula is skewered on the bow of a ship.

‘Pete’s Dragon’ is out now across the UK.

Image credits: Disney