Sometimes even the smartest people—with the most skin in the game—are spectacularly wrong.

Disney's 1994 film “The Lion King” was made by their B-team of animators. The company intentionally had their best people working on Pocahontas, which debuted a year later. Animated movies usually take at least 2-3 years to develop, so the same artists couldn’t work on both simultaneously.

The Lion King went on to make $968.5 million at the box office (the highest-grossing animated film of all time). It even became the second-highest-grossing film of all time, behind only Jurassic Park.

Pocahontas made $346 million.

The same dynamic was true at Dreamworks in the late 1990’s.

The best animators proudly worked on “Prince of Egypt,” and if their work didn’t meet expectations they were “punished” by being reassigned to Shrek. Shrek went on to make nearly $500m at the box office.

Prince of Egypt made less than half that.