Kingdom Hearts (2003 Pilot)

Kingdom Hearts is a canceled and partially lost animated television series loosely based on the game of the same name.

The project was reportedly scrapped early in development, with only a story board pitch being made before being rejected. What is known is that Seth Kearsley, an experienced figure in the animation and television industry, was hired by The Walt Disney Company to produce a series for the Disney Channel. As the director and lead writer, Kearsley was tasked to develop a story pitch and, according to his own testimonials from interviews on the subject, was given a surprising amount of creative freedom. This allowed him to stray from the story of its source material, with only the characters and settings remaining in the pitch. Though the artstyle would be more faithful, with anime-like designs inspired by the artwork of Tetsuya Nomura. The backgrounds were planned to be reused from the films that were represented in the games. This pitch was also fully voiced with placeholder music taken from the film Gladiator. According to Seth Kearsley, while test screenings were positively recieved to the point of overshadowing other projects that screened along with it, the project was rejected for being "incredibly dark" for the Disney Channel and its target demographic of children and families. Disney executives also felt uncomfortable creating a project without the involvement of Nomura.

The only official media related to this project to publicly release are a collection of storyboards, likely the same used for the story pitch, which Kearsley uploaded to his DeviantArt account in 2014. He also revealed in a Twitter post that he possess a VHS tape labeled KINGDOM HEARTS "KH DVD V.6 MOV" ALT dated to August 28, 2003, though the contents of the tape have never been released