The DreamWorks That Never Were

Remember how in my '2020 in Animated Features' article, I talked about how DreamWorks cancelled two movies with potential? Well, today, I will be talking about two films that had potential: Me and My Shadow and BOO.

Me and My Shadow would've taken place in two different worlds: The human world and the shadow world. The human world would've been 3D, while the shadow world would've been 2D. The story would've been about a shadow named Stan, who was attached to a boring human named Stanley Grubb. Stan, however, yearns for a more exciting life, but when a crime in the shadow community puts both their lives in danger, Stan is forced to take control of Stanley, thrusting both of them into an adventure featuring a shadowy villain who intends to lead a rebellion against the human world. Long story short, the film was cancelled because of a variety of reasons, including having its release date changed, switch of directors, 4 box-office failures in a row, PDI being shut down, and DreamWorks co-founder Jeffery Katzenburg leaving the company in April 2016.

BOO, short for Bureau of Otherworldly Operations, was a cancelled DreamWorks film that would've been about two ghosts, a newbie and a veteran, who work at a sort of paranormal Men In Black, policing the afterlife and those who choose to abuse it. It was going to be released in July 2015, but because of the box-office failures of Rise of the Guardians, Turbo, Mr. Peabody and Sherman, and The Penguins of Madagascar, along with the closure of PDI, DreamWorks decided to give BOO the axe, despite the film being halfway finished.
To make matters worse, BOO director Tony Leondis left DreamWorks to work on The Emoji Movie. That's like Chris Wedge leaving production on the 2013 film Epic in favor of a movie about, say, Kinetix toys! Or Dan Scanlon leaving production on Onward to direct a movie about Beanie Babies!
If you're reading this, DreamWorks or Universal (who now owns DreamWorks's catalog), could you at least adapt BOO into a half-hour Halloween Netflix special? If you were able to resurrect Larrikins (another cancelled DreamWorks film) into the short film Bilby (which is included on the DVD and Blu-Ray release of How To Train Your Dragon 3), then you must have the talent and time to resurrect BOO into a Halloween special. I bet it could sit comfortably on the shelf alongside Scared Shrekless and Mutant Pumpkins From Outer Space (a Monsters vs Aliens TV special).
I will talk about Mutant Pumpkins From Outer Space in October, when I include it in my Top 10 Best Animated Halloween Specials countdown. On January 19th, I will post my much-anticipated review of Jon Favreau's The Lion King.