John Candy’s Final Film Was Never Released for Unknown Reasons

John Candy was hands-down one of the greatest comedic performers of all-time. But after starring in classics like Uncle Buck, Spaceballs and Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Candy’s final film job was playing the drunken wagoneer in the disappointing Western parody Wagon’s East. 

Or was it?

While Candy died during the making of Wagon’s East, Michael Moore’s Candy-starring Canadian Bacon actually was released even later, due to a delay caused by distribution problems. But on IMDb, Candy’s last credited film role is in 1996’s The Magic 7. Which begs the question: What the fuck is The Magic 7?

Reportedly, The Magic 7 was an environmentally-conscious children’s movie that combined live-action scenes and animated segments. The production boasted a wildly eclectic cast of megastars, including Michael J. Fox, Demi Moore, Meryl Streep, the late Madeline Kahn, Jennifer Love Hewitt and Bette Midler.

Oh, and James Earl Jones played a dragon with “severe indigestion,” and Ice-T voiced a rapping golden skeleton. Candy, meanwhile, took on the role of “Smokestack Sam” who, according to the film’s production materials, was “Half car, half man… all Texan.”

The story of The Magic 7 follows a 12-year-old boy who travels to a magical land full of the “Dreaded Deadlies,” villains who pollute the environment and don’t believe in recycling. Candy’s character is one of those villains, as is Fox’s character, a “500-pound French Moroccan maggot.” The kid has to “solve” the secret of the “Magic 7” in order to get home. 

While production began in 1990, as Variety reported in 1996, the movie was ultimately scheduled to be released on Earth Day the following year. The reason why a non-studio project attracted so many big names was because of its environmental message. Ted Danson claimed that “The Magic 7 will be a video teaching tool of unparalleled significance. For the Earth to survive, we must educate the children of the world so they can take us forward to the 21st century.”

It also had the support of groups like The U.N. Environmental Program, Environmental Media Assn. & Defense Fund and UNICEF. At the time, one of the producers claimed The Magic 7 was even being adapted for the stage, “for schools around the world to produce and cast on their own.”

Don’t worry, this isn’t a Mandela Effect situation, there’s a very good reason why you don’t remember this movie: It was never actually released. Why? Well, it’s not exactly clear. 

The director, Roger Holzberg, went on to become a Creative Director and Vice President of Walt Disney Imagineering before co-founding Reimagine Well, a health organization that admirably uses “emerging technologies” to help improve patient wellness. In 2018, Holzberg shared an update about the film on YouTube, admitting that the animation process never actually began. But the live-action segments were filmed, and with the exception of one role, the voice actors’ parts were all recorded. 

This includes Candy’s work; Holzberg’s video even includes clips of Candy belting out one of the musical numbers. 

Can’t someone just animate this movie already? We’ve gotten like 10,000 Minions movies, but no one will finish a cartoon in which Madeline Kahn voices an anthropomorphic “thermo-nuclear reactor”?