Watch Brad Bird's 1980 Animated Pencil-Test Trailer for THE SPIRIT

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Back in the 1980s, director Brad Bird (The Iron Giant, The Incredibles, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol , and Tomorrowland) created a pencil-test trailer for an animated adaptation of Will Eisner's classic comic book The Spirit. He was developing the film with Star Wars producer Gary Kurtz, and it would have been awesome!

I would have absolutely loved to see something like this get made! It would have been a hell of a lot better than Frank Miller's 2008 adaptation, which was awful. This video gives of a glimpse of a wonderful, beautiful animated film project that was for some reason never meant to be. 

Producer Steven Paul Leiva (Space Jam) uploaded the video up on YouTube and offered up this some interesting commentary and backstory in the description:

“In 2008 as Frank Miller’s live action feature film based on Will Eisner’s The Spirit was being released I wrote a piece for the Los Angeles Times on the time, back in 1980, when I became involved with Brad Bird and Gary Kurtz (producer of the first two Star Wars movies) in trying to get into production an animated feature based on The Spirit. I spoke of a pencil test “trailer” for the our proposed film that was made by Bird along with several classmates from Cal Arts, most of whom were working at Disney at the time. Quite a few people who read the article contacted me about seeing the film. I did have it on an old VHS, but it was deep in storage at the time plus as I did not really own the film, I told them they would have to look elsewhere to find a copy. Later, I found the VHS and put it aside. Recently Andrea Fiamma, an Italian journalist writing on the subject for the website Fumettologica, asked again if the film could be seen. As it is a small piece of animation history, I’ve decided to post it here.”

I hope you enjoy the video below.

In 2008 as Frank Miller's live action feature film based on Will Eisner's "The Spirit" was being released I wrote a piece for the Los Angeles Times on the time, back in 1980, when I became involved with Brad Bird and Gary Kurtz (producer of the first two "Star Wars"

Via: io9