When Sting started writing songs for a dramatic cartoon musical from Disney, he envisioned generations of children enjoying the music.
Instead, most of his tunes got cut when studio executives, unhappy with the film's script, turned the epic musical into a not-so-musical buddy farce, "The Emperor's New Groove."
"At first, I was angry and perturbed. Then I wanted some vengeance," the Grammy-winning musician said. "We couldn't use the songs in this new film because the characters they were written for didn't exist anymore."
The behind-the-scenes battling was captured on film for yet another movie: a documentary — ominously titled "The Sweatbox" — made by Sting's wife, Trudie Styler, and set for release early next year.
Randy Fullmer, producer of "The Emperor's New Groove," said Sting simply was the unwitting victim of a troubled production. While the filmmakers loved the six songs he wrote with collaborator David Hartley, Fullmer said, the movie just wasn't a musical anymore.
"I'm not a particularly easy person to call and say, 'We're not using your songs,' " Sting said. "And I didn't make them feel any easier about it."
Then came the real blowup — Fullmer asked the angry musician for two new songs.
"It was hard on him," Fullmer said. "There's no question."
Sting said his music for the original story aimed for drama like that of the Oscar-winning work by Elton John in "The Lion King" and Phil Collins in "Tarzan."
"The Emperor's New Groove" started life as "Kingdom of the Sun," a retelling of Mark Twain's classic story "The Prince and the Pauper" set in an ancient Incan civilization.
Halfway through production, executives at Walt Disney Co. grew impatient with the tale of an arrogant king who gets his comeuppance after trading places with a look-alike llama herder. Thomas Schumacher, Disney's president of feature animation, threatened to close the production down, Fullmer said.
The plot was the first thing to go.
Screenwriter David Reynolds devised a new story about a petulant emperor who must reclaim the throne after being transformed into a llama by a power-hungry sorceress, voiced by Eartha Kitt. Comedian David Spade stayed on as the voice of the spoiled leader, who now was paired with a beefy, kindhearted peasant, voiced by John Goodman.
The love story was cut, rendering "One Day She'll Love Me," Sting's romantic duet with singer Shawn Colvin, obsolete.
A subplot involving the villain, a former beauty who blames the sun for prematurely aging her, also was cut, leaving no room for the song "Snuff Out the Light." Other dramatic songs were cut as well.
"In the original version, characters in the movie sang in a more traditional way," director Mark Dindal said. "And as this evolved into the comic tone, that idea didn't fit the sensibility of the movie."
Hartley said he and Sting thought their work was finished. "It was a very enjoyable year of writing," he said. "But that was it."
But then the fiery behind-the-scenes story found a happier ending.
Disney agreed to release three of the six deleted songs as bonus tracks on the soundtrack album: the villain's theme, the love song and a dance number called "Walk the Llama Llama."
"After about five minutes of ranting and raving, I thought, 'OK, let's get back to work. Let's try to make this thing happen,' " Sting said.
He and Hartley wrote two new pieces: "My Funny Friend and Me," sung by Sting during the closing credits, and "Perfect World," performed by Tom Jones as a lounge act in the cartoon.
"It's been a very long road, but I'm happy we got this far," Sting said. "I didn't think we would at one point."
Meanwhile, Schumacher said he saw footage of Styler's "The Sweatbox" and isn't nervous about it hurting the studio's image. "I think it's going to be great!" he said.
The documentary will include some of the unreleased songs, along with footage of the infamous phone call informing Sting that his songs had been cut. "It's not just a run-of-the-mill making-of film, which is kind of boring," Sting said. "This has got real drama."