Gargoyles Creator Greg Weisman Explains Why Disney Distanced Itself From the Animated Series
"It was a time of darkness. It was a world of fear. It was the age of gargoyles." It was the age of The Disney Afternoon, Disney's Buena Vista Television block of programming that included such Disney-branded animated fare as DuckTales, Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers, TaleSpin, Darkwing Duck, Goof Troop — and Gargoyles. Originally aired in Disney's Afternoon syndicated block before moving to Disney-owned ABC on Saturday mornings for its third and final season, the Walt Disney Television Animation series took flight without the "Disney's" labeling of its not-as-edgy contemporaries.
"Disney was afraid to put its name on the series back then," series co-creator Greg Weisman explained in response to a fan's question about the Disney branding Twitter. "So technically we were Buena Vista's Gargoyles."
Disney was afraid to put its name on the series back then. So technically we were Buena Vista's Gargoyles. #TrueStory https://t.co/NV6RxKFovd
— Greg Weisman (@Greg_Weisman) June 2, 2023
Aired between 1994 and 1997, Disney's Gargoyles was about ancient winged defenders of the night — Goliath (Keith David) and his Manhattan Clan, including Brooklyn (Jeff Bennett), Lexington (Thom Adcox-Hernandez), Broadway (Bill Fagerbakke), Bronx (Frank Welker) — who awaken in modern Manhattan after being frozen in stone by a magic spell for a thousand years.
The more-mature series is now labeled Disney's Gargoyles on Disney+, where all 78 episodes are available to stream. You can see the original (Disney-less) title card compared to the streamer's tile below.
"Gargoyles is still my baby. I don't own it. I don't get a dime off of it being on Disney Plus. And yet I'm so thrilled that it is, I'm thrilled that it represents a chance — even if it's a slim chance — to bring it back," Weisman previously told Polygon. "I've always wanted to do more. I've got a timeline for the show that's 315 pages long. I've got notebooks and comp books full of ideas for it. Spinoff notions and all sorts of things. Literally nothing would make me happier than to go back and do more Gargoyles."
The action-oriented animated series predated The Walt Disney Company's purchase of Marvel Entertainment, but according to Weisman, then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner considered buying Marvel Comics to compete with rival Warner Bros., which controlled DC Comics characters like Batman and Superman. At the center of an "action universe" would be Gargoyles, which proved a "homerun" hit in its first season fueled by top toy sales.
"He said, 'Well, Warner Brothers has DC Comics, we need to have an action universe like DC or Marvel.' And he turned to me and said, 'Could we use Gargoyles as the launching pad for a Disney action universe?' And I said yes. So we began to develop all these spinoffs and backdoor pilots, like the New Olympians and the Pendragon episode, and others that we put into the second season," Weisman explained. But following a regime change, Weisman told Polygon, "Gargoyles became an old-regime show, and the idea of using it to create a Disney action universe completely fell away. It was a great moment that didn't pan out, but it was a great moment."