Recap - Celebrate the 25th Anniversary of Disney's "The Emperor's New Groove" with Its Creators at WonderCon 2025

The famously troubled production resulted in a very fun film.

Yesterday afternoon during WonderCon 2025 at the Anaheim Convention Center in Southern California, some of the creative talent behind Disney’s 2000 animated feature The Emperor’s New Groove participated in a panel presentation in celebration of the 25th anniversary of this acclaimed cult-classic film from Walt Disney Animation Studios. Below is my brief recap of this panel along with photos from the accompanying slideshow.

The panelists for this 25th anniversary discussion of The Emperor’s New Groove were as follows: story artist Jeff Ranjo (Moana), story supervisor Steve Anderson (Meet the Robinsons), character designer Joe Moshier (Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse), assistant production manager Tracey Miller-Zarneke (Chicken Little), and screenwriter Dave Reynolds (Finding Nemo).

They started off the presentation by sharing early and later character design concept art sketches of Kuzco and Pacha.

Next they showed concept drawings and a maquette of Yzma, along with concepts of Kronk. We learned that the character of Yzma was inspired by Peruvian singer Yma Sumac, while Disney originally wanted actor Brad Garrett to voice Kronk, though the creative team was insistent on Patrick Warburton being perfect for the role.

They also shared concept art for some miscellaneous characters and a style guide for the film.

Then we got a look at some storyboards for The Emperor’s New Groove, including those for a deleted scene called “Pickle Festival."

Some of the most fun artwork that was shared were just referred to as “random sketches."

Here are a couple behind-the-scenes photos of the movie’s animators and production crew.

As many Disney fans know, Kingdom of the Sun was the original title of the movie that became The Emperor’s New Groove.

We were also shown photos of Disney Parks walkaround characters for The Emperor’s New Groove.

They did mention and show a quick clip from the infamously disowned documentary The Sweatbox, which chronicled the production of Kingdom of the Sun and its transformation into The Emperor’s New Groove.

Lastly they shared a photo from the 15th anniversary celebration of The Emperor’s New Groove at Disney’s El Capitan Theatre ten years ago in Hollywood.

The Emperor’s New Groove is available to stream on Disney+.