People really like this film?

Filmation Studios, who produced the film, had planned to make a series of feature Animated Fairy Tale classics that would open in theaters for a short while and then be released to home video. I think there were to be eight films to start, beginning with "Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night" followed by “Snow White, The Adventure Continues” (the working title at that time) and other titles. I think “Cinderella” or the “Arabian Nights” was to follow.

Producer Lou Scheimer's goal was not to remake Disney, but to create comptemary sequels to those classic films that everyone was already familiar with. When I was hired to work on Pinocchio I noticed the production was beginning to become probmatic. First of all was the voice of the "Blue Fairy". Shirley Jones star of among things like the “Music Man” and “Partridge Family”, had already recorded some of the dialogue and songs for the project. She ended up pulling out of the production before completion of her work. I think a rumor at the time was that her husband, Marty Ingels for some unknown reason, talked her into pulling out of the film. Several other singer/actresses including Olivia Newton John were approached but refused. Finally Pop Singer Ricky Lee Jones, whose big hit song at the time was "Bette Davis Eyes", accepted the role and re-recorded all the dialogue and songs.

Later during the course of the production, Disney Attorneys were making their presents felt. One day they presented the producers with a “Laundry list” of changes they demanded to be made to the film. Some of which were unreasonably ridiculous. An example of this was the word “MUSICBOX” they wanted removed from the ALL of the dialogue of the script. They felt this conflicted with the title of a background score tune entitled “Little Music Box” that was played under the early scenes in Geppetto’s workshop in the Disney’s version. Because of the changes and retakes that were demanded the cost of the production went up and eventually the budget of Snow White was reduced. Because of this most of the sequences of Snow White have the look of “Saturday Morning” television animation. Only a couple of the sequences maintain a look of feature quality, primarily the climatic battle sequence toward the end of the film.

In the final analysis, Pinocchio ended up costing about five times the budget of Snow White, and only bringing in about an eighth of that in Box Office revenue. The final tally on the Video release is yet to be known.