On the heels of the gigantic fiasco that arose recently when Disney, going against hundreds of years of tradition and the will of the people, decide to change the upcoming animated feature’s title from Rapunzel to Tangled, rumors have arisen that Pixar may be about to make the same kind of devastating unprecedented flip-flopping reversal.
According to someone who heard something on some blog somewhere, Pixar’s The Bear and the Bow (the touching story of a princess who wants to stop training with her Bowflex and just sit around watching Brother Bear) may instead be released with the title Brave. Scandalous as this may seem, there are actually some reasonable reasons for making such a change. For example, shorter titles are easier to remember and to spell, and don’t take up as much room on the Internet. The title also has some historical precedent — those of us who are Americans of a certain age can remember the days before the 28th amendment when we used to stand with our hands over our hearts at baseball games while someone sang about “the land of the free and the home of the bear and the bow.”
But the important thing to remember here is that Disney often creates films under working titles that were changed before final release. A few examples:
| Release Title | Original Title | |
| Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs | Snow White and Dopey, Doc, Sneezy, Sleepy, Grumpy, Happy, and Bashful | |
| The Jungle Book | Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book (Highlights) | |
| The Black Cauldron | The Negro Cauldron | |
| The Great Mouse Detective | Basil Who Lives on the Same Block as Sherlock Holmes | |
| Lilo & Stitch | Lilo & Stitch & Ted & Alice | |
| Home on the Range | Where the Deer and the Antelope Play | |
| Who Framed Roger Rabbit? | Who Censored Roger Rabbit?; Who Shot Roger Rabbit?; Who Strangled Roger Rabbit?; Who the Heck is Roger Rabbit? | |
| James and the Giant Peach | A Clockwork Orange | |
| Tron | Ron |
Tags: Bear and the Bow, Brave