 Was originally meant to be a musical. Pete Townshend (qv) and  Des McAnuff (qv) developed it as a stage musical, using songs from  Pete Townshend (qv)s concept album "The Iron Man" (much like the  stage version of The Who (qv)s _Tommy (1975)_ (qv).  Des McAnuff (qv) decided it would work better as an animated  feature and pitched it to Warner Bros.