Disney tried to kill it.

A screenwriter who had watched a comedian turn up unannounced at LA comedy clubs wrote a part for him: a brain-fried fruit bat with wires sticking out of its head. The comedian recorded fourteen hours of improvised material for a role that was meant to last eight minutes.

The comedian was Robin Williams, and it was his first animated voice. The film was FERNGULLY: THE LAST RAINFOREST (1992). Later that same year he voiced the Genie in Aladdin, and the world fell in love with his manic, improvised style. He had already run it here, as a bat, in a largely forgotten environmental cartoon.

Disney noticed. When Jeffrey Katzenberg realized his new Genie was also headlining a rival animated film, he tried to force Williams to quit. Williams refused. So, according to the producers, Disney went after the little movie, outbidding them for studio space twice, then trying to buy the building they finally rented out from under them.

FernGully was a labor of love fifteen years from page to screen, an Australian rainforest fable a generation of kids absorbed before they had the words for what it was teaching them.

The largest animation studio in the world tried to bury it. It survived, and for a lot of people it became the first film that ever made them care about a forest.

In April, 2026, Amazon MGM Studios announced a live action remake of FernGully, with Marielle Heller directing her own adapted screenplay.

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FernGully: The Last Rainforest (1992) was an independent, collaborative venture between Kroyer Films, Youngheart Productions, and FAI Films on a budget of $24 million, blending over 16 tons of traditional hand-drawn animation with pioneering computer-generated imagery (CGI) across an international network of studios. While 20th Century Fox handled its initial global theatrical release in April 1992, distribution rights eventually shifted into Disney's portfolio following its acquisition of Fox. The franchise's worldwide distribution rights were ultimately secured by Shout! Studios in 2021, leaving the cult classic off major platforms like Disney+.