Trivia / Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland

• Box Office Bomb: In the U.S. thanks to the limited exposure, which all but guaranteed it wouldn't make a profit there. Budget, $35 million. Box office, $1,368,000.
• Creator Backlash: Hayao Miyazaki briefly worked on this film and has gone on record saying that it was the worst experience he's had in his professional career. He eventually abandoned the production to focus on other films before ushering in Studio Ghibli.
• Deleted Scene: The DVD release has some extra scenes that weren't on the old VHS release, which patch up some minor holes in the plot. Most of the scenes were deleted due to Never Say "Die" being enforced, so Nemo's life wasn't allowed to be shown to be in jeopardy by using the scepter. One place where the edits on the VHS version may have actually been an improvement is the intro; instead of a long and uninteresting opening credits sequence with the "Little Nemo" theme by Melissa Manchester (which appears on the DVD), they instead skipped the credits and played the song over Nemo's first dream.
• Development Hell: Work began on this film in 1978, but it didn't get released until 1989.
  • One reason was that the directors were being switched around. Very early on, the film was offered to Chuck Jones and Hayao Miyazaki, Jones found issues with the script and Miyazaki did not want the movie to be All Just a Dream (despite that kinda being the entire point of Little Nemo).
  • Another reason was that the shows from DiC and Disney, plus their own anime works like Cat's Eye and Space Adventure Cobra, were taking TMS Entertainment's production time away from Little Nemo.
• Late Export for You: Released in Japanese theaters on July 15, 1989, released in North American theaters on August 21, 1992.
• The Shelf of Movie Languishment: The U.S. theatrical release didn't come until 1992, three years after the Japanese one, despite the film being intended for the Western market all along. That it made it to the U.S. at all was at least in part to capitalize on a revived interest in animated features in the West after Beauty and the Beast's success the previous winter, which got several other foreign and/or shelved films into theaters at last.
• Troubled Production: It took eight years to make, going through all kinds of writers and animators, both of whom thought the other side was really in charge. As noted, Hayao Miyazaki has said it's easily the worst experience he's ever had making a movie.
• What Could Have Been
  • The (now-)famed director Hayao Miyazaki was planning on making the film, and you can see Yoshifumi Kondo's pilot on YouTube. Presumably the intention was to showcase Icarus was a dream, an aeronaut from Slumberland. However, he later left the project as he went off to Topcraft to do Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, and left the film in the hands of someone else.
  • Another form of the film from 1987 was more compatible to the final film.
  • At one point the art style for the film was closer to the comics, as seen in this artwork by Fil Barlow, but a Disney-esque/anime art style was chosen instead.
  • George Lucas was approached with the story but turned it down. Chuck Jones was also attached at some point, but left.
  • The "Etiquette Song" recycles the tune of "The Chimpanzoo", a Cut Song from Mary Poppins.

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