Wolfgang Reitherman's 1973 Robin Hood turns the English outlaw tale into a musical fox-and-wolf caper, the first Disney feature made without Walt Disney's guidance and the first built entirely around animal stand-ins for a human cast. Cheaply made and visibly recycled from earlier Disney films, it survived mixed reviews at release to become a durable cult favourite.
A wealthy Parisian widow's pampered cats are set to inherit her fortune, which prompts her butler to abandon them in the countryside, where a streetwise tomcat helps guide them home. The project began in 1962 as a proposed live-action television episode, was rejected, revived, and eventually turned into an animated feature at Disney's own suggestion — the last one he personally approved before he died in 1971. Phil Harris, cast as the tomcat O'Malley, was given room to improvise much of his own dialogue, shaping the character the way his earlier work on The Jungle Book had shaped Baloo.
Mowgli, a boy raised by wolves in the Indian jungle, is walked toward the safety of a human village by the panther Bagheera and the bear Baloo while the tiger Shere Khan hunts him. Story artist Bill Peet developed an early, darker treatment closer to Rudyard Kipling's original stories before Walt Disney rejected it as unsuited to a family audience, replacing Peet with a new writing team who leaned into comedy and music instead. It became the last animated feature Disney oversaw personally before his death partway through production.