Kingdom Hearts Television Pilot Released Online (19 Years Later)

All the way back in 2003 a pilot for a proposed animated series based on the popular Kingdom Hearts franchise was developed. Unfortunately the series was never picked up for distribution. Ever since only a handful of sketches and a rough outline have been available to the public.



Now after nearly two decades the director of the unproduced pilot, Seth Kearsley (Known for Eight Crazy Nights, Mummies Alive! and Dilbert) discovered an old VHS tape of the pilot. Shortly after doing so he asked on his social media if anyone knew how to convert old tapes to digital. 

Now after all these years Seth released the full pilot online, unlocking the door for the world to see. And it is quite a site:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Iyg6gQZFhc

He released the video with the following description:

I don’t own this. I claim no rights to any part of this except that this is my work. I’m not profiting from it. I want to show my work. It’s been 20 years.

This is not without it’s flaws, which I have not doubt will be pointed out, but I was really proud of the story we were able to tell in the time we had. Setting up the entire premise of a series, and doing a ‘typical episode’ is a tall order. I feel like we pulled that off, and when they tested it with kids, it tested better than anything else they were testing in that round.

The short itself is a little over 11 minutes long and gives us a brief summary of the overall story. Since at the time only the first game had released the series would have likely followed those events. Had the series went on for longer we may have gotten to see events from other stories like Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories and Kingdom Hearts II.

What are your thoughts on this piece of Kingdom Hearts history? Do you wish we could have gotten this series? Or are you happy this door remained locked? Let us know below.