Interview with John Musker and Ron Clements
Article written by Nancy Beiman
© The Unofficial Disney Archive, 12 January 1993

JOHN MUSKER:  [Speaking about their early partnership,] Ron had suggested Basil of Baker Street as a possible property.  [Disney] liked it, so they started up a unit working on that.  I was then taken off [The Black Cauldron] and put to work on it.

RON CLEMENTS:  The Black Cauldron was in production for a very long period of time — animation took nearly four years — and Basil was kind of puttering around during most of that time.  There wasn't a lot of pressure on it while Cauldron was in production; there were only a few people on it.  It was right around the time that we were gearing up for production that the Studio went through major upheavals.  There was a take-over threat from Saul Steinberg, and the possibility that the whole Studio would be dismantled and sold off.  Basil, which later became The Great Mouse Detective, was pretty far along story-wise when the new regime came in.