By Abdul Masih —
While at Disney, Tom Bancroft worked on Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King and Mulan. But he didn’t like the direction Disney was heading, so he quit.
“I saw the direction Disney was going in all the way back in 2,000, and I felt very uneasy about it. Even though this is my dream, I don’t need to stay here,” Tom says. “God gave me a new dream.”
Looking for projects more in line with his Christian faith and values, he joined VeggieTales until Big Idea Entertainment went bankrupt. His newest project is directing the full-length animation movie Light of the World to be released in theaters Sept.5.
At Disney, he wasn’t allowed to talk about his faith in the hallways. At VeggieTales, they prayed before every meeting. “It’s so corporate. You don’t really have a voice,” Tom says about Disney. You can get black-balled for speaking out about your faith.”
Tom attended a Baptist church in 1990s when the denomination was boycotting Disney. “I was into my career. I was saying yes to everything because I wanted to climb the ladder so much..”
To work at Disney is the pinnacle for animators. But God gave Tom a fresh mindset when he got worn down and sick and developed meningitis. He stayed in the hospital for a week. “I could’ve died,” he says.
One week later he quit and went to work for Big Idea, where he was supervising director and co-creator of LarryBoy: The Cartoon Adventures and was involved in the production of the feature film Jonah: A Veggietales Movie.
Light of the World. a $20M budget project, tells the story of Jesus through the eyes of John, the youngest disciple.
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