Walt Disney Was a Miserable Bastard Before Mickey Mouse

Most of us either know Walt Disney from the saccharine, gleeful television presentations he did in the 60s for Disney promotional specials (which aired non-stop in the 80s on the Disney Channel) or the overly-sanitized Tom Hanks characterization from Saving Mr. Banks. A new movie seeks to (sort of) dive beyond the surface of that image and show how the man behind Mickey Mouse came to be.

According to Deadline, the movie is based on the book Walt Before Mickey: Disney’s Early Years, 1919-1928 by Timothy S. Susanin. It follows almost a decade of the young animator’s struggles to gain acceptance into the fledgling animation world of the early 20th century. Thomas Ian Nicholas plays Walt Disney and yes, that’s Jon Heder as his brother Roy doing whatever he feels like he wants to do, GOSH. Not sure yet if the movie will touch on rumors of Disney’s deep-seeded Anti-Semitism but don’t let that stop anyone from making Oscar predictions or anything.