Quest for Camelot (released in the United Kingdom as The Magic Sword: Quest for Camelot) is a 1998 American animated musical fantasy film produced by Warner Bros. Feature Animation and directed by Frederik Du Chau and very loosely based on the 1976 novel The King's Damosel by Vera Chapman. It features the voices of Jessalyn Gilsig, Cary Elwes, Gary Oldman, Eric Idle, Don Rickles, Jaleel White, Jane Seymour, Pierce Brosnan, Gabriel Byrne, and John Gielgud. Andrea Corr, Bryan White and Celine Dion also do the singing voices of the main characters.
In May 1995, the film, initially titled The Quest for the Holy Grail, was announced to be Warner Bros. Feature Animation's first project, with Bill Kroyer as the film's director. The film went into production later that year, but it was delayed when animators were re-assigned to help finish Space Jam (1996). During the interim, the story was heavily re-tooled, among of which the central focus on the Holy Grail would be replaced with Excalibur. This resulted in creative differences, in which Kroyer was replaced with Frederik Du Chau. This was later followed with prominent departures of the film's animation and management staff. Because of the production troubles, the film's release was delayed from November 1997 to May 1998. Animation for the film was mostly done in Glendale, California and London.[4][5]
Quest for Camelot was released by Warner Bros. under their Family Entertainment label on May 15, 1998. It was an "expensive flop", grossing $38.1 million against a budget of $40 million.[6] One of the film's songs "The Prayer" won the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song.
