Trivia / Bolt

• Acting for Two: Chloë Moretz voices the real Penny in her youth, as well as the replacement Penny from the end of the film.
• Billing Displacement: Miley Cyrus is Billed Above the Title but is a supporting character at best while Susie Essman (the voice of Mittens) is lumped into the "also starring" list of actors.
• Cast the Runner-Up: After Chloë Mortez's lines for Penny got redubbed by Miley Cyrus, the final film would have Mortez voice Penny as a child, and Penny's replacement actor seen at the end of the film.
• Celebrity Voice Actor:
  • The primary members of the Argentine music group Les Luthiers give their voices to the pigeons in the Spanish dub ^note Daniel Rabinovich as Vinnie; Marcos Mundstock as Joey; Carlos Núñez Cortés as Bobby, Carlos López Puccio as Louie and Jorge Maronna as Saul. It is a very notable case as they voice the pigeons in both the Spanish and Latin American dubs, even having to record new lines due to dub differences. This is a feat that is practically unheard-of, as Latin American and Spanish dubs practically never share voice actors.
  • In the Canadian French dub, Bolt and Rhino are voiced by Claude Legault and Guy Jodoin respectively, two popular actors in Quebec who are also known for having worked together on Dans Une Galaxie Près De Chez Vous. As for Penny, she's voiced by Frédérique Dufort, who at the time played one of the main characters in a live-action series titled Tactik.
• Executive Meddling:
  • John Lasseter, who felt that Chris Sanders' original treatment for the film was "too mature", strongly suggested several changes, which Sanders refused, causing some considerable behind-the-scene drama resulting in Sanders leaving Disney after 18 years and moving on to DreamWorks Animation. According to some Disney insiders who saw previews of Sanders' American Dog, the meddling was not without justification.
    "I saw the latest reel (yes, I worked at Disney then) and it was the most disjointed, confusing, quirky, weird, unmarketable movie Ive [sic] seen. It was rife with plot problems, the characters were unappealing... it just wasn't working and Sanders wouldn't fix it."
  • Sanders himself counterargued this years later—when he held interviews for Lilo & Stitch's twentieth anniversary—stating that unlike Lilo & Stitch, he didn't have the Protection from Editors that he got for his directorial debut (when he had Thomas Schumacher cover for him), and claimed that executives wanted more straightforward "yes" or "no" answers to their questions, which Sanders was not able to do due to the complexities he had in mind for the characters.
    Chris Sanders: It had a lot to do with rationalizing what this dog was. "Can he drive a car or can he not?" The answer was yes and no. He can make the car go but, no, he can't drive. And that would become a big sticking point. In my mind, that idea wasn't that weird, it was pretty simple; in other people's minds at the studio, it wasn't making any sense. Ultimately I was asked, "Does he know he's a dog or not?" The answer I gave was, "He knows he's a dog, but has a warped idea what a dog is and does." That answer didn't sit well. They wanted a "yes" or "no." Later on I equated it to Buzz Lightyear, who did NOT know he was a toy. So the "yes," or "no," on that would have been a simple, resounding, "no." Very clear. My dog was more subtle, like Stitch. And that wasn't going to get through their system. So after a long, hard session with the exec, I was without a simple answer, and I was like, "Okay, I don't know what to tell you."
• The Foreign Subtitle: Bolt: Star despite Himself in France.
• Licensed Game: Based on the Bolt TV show, with a Framing Device of Rhino watching the show sometime after the events of the film.
• The Other Marty: Chloë Moretz was the first choice to voice the role of Penny, and apparently voiced the character for the entire film. But she is quickly replaced by Miley Cyrus, who went on to re-record most of Penny's dialogue, Moretz's voice for Penny as a child still remains, and Moretz also voiced the replacement Penny that was seen at the end of the film after Penny quitted the TV show she starred in.
• Permanent Placeholder: Rhino's voice acting was done by story artist Mark Walton who was just supposed to do the scratch voice. He was so hilarious, however, that he was asked to do the actual voice for the movie. He was just as excited as his character.
• Stunt Casting: As mentioned above, the majority of Penny's lines were already recorded before the studio decided to recast Miley Cyrus to voice the character. Recasting to feature their current teen star in the movie—not really a coincidence.
• Troubled Production: The film was originally helmed by Lilo & Stitch director Chris Sanders, who wanted to make another quirky animated family film. To that end, he envisioned American Dog, which followed a popular television star dog named Henry who (after being knocked out and waking up on a train to Nevada) enlists the help of two other talking animals, including a cat and oversized bunny rabbit, to drive him back home (while believing he's still in a television show). The film went through several different cuts (and suggestions from John Lasseter and other Pixar directors on how to improve the film), but Sanders reportedly rejected all of the changes.^note This is not without precedent; Lasseter reportedly hated Sanders's Lilo & Stitch, which at the time was Disney Animation's biggest combined critical and commercial success of the 2000s decade, because he did not like how "weird" it was and would badmouth it while uplifting Pixar's own works when given the opportunity. So Sanders, who believed he earned an Auteur License from Lilo & Stitch, was most likely and understandably put off by having to work with Lasseter and his apparent elitist attitude when the latter animator joined Disney Animation. Lasseter then fired Sanders from the project, causing the latter to jump ship to DreamWorks, and the film was drastically reworked (under a constrained timeframe) into the final product. Tellingly, American Dog is not mentioned anywhere on the film's DVD features, and only receives a passing reference in the making-of book The Art of Bolt.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The film started as a far cry from what it would become. It began as Chris Sanders' follow-up to Lilo & Stitch, with him serving as director and production designer. Story-wise, Bolt was a Funny Animal secret agent who was a red dog from an unknown breed (possibly a Jack Russell Terrier) instead of a white Swiss Shephard, Rhino was a giant radioactive rabbit and Mittens was a male Persian cat with an eyepatch named Ogo (the last character would later be recycled for Sanders' webcomic Kiskaloo). See Executive Meddling for the rest. Additional characters included Jo Knight, a Las Vegas Cat Girl waitress playing a Bond Girl role and Ruthie, an undead homicidal Girl Scout that would be the film's villain.
  • Former NFL player Todd Marinovich was in talks to do the voice of Bolt.
  • In an earlier draft of the film, Bolt's realization that he wasn't a superdog didn't come until the group was in Las Vegas after he was violently attacked by two stray dogs and was unable to defend himself. The filmmakers decided that the scene was drastically out of place in the more family-friendly film, and ultimately devised an earlier, more mundane situation for Bolt to realize the truth.
  • Mitten's Kick the Dog backstory originally revealed that not only had her family declawed and abandoned her, but her name was Mr. Mittens because they never bothered to check if she was a boy or a girl.
• Working Title: American Dog.

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