Trivia / Richie Rich

The 1994 film:

• Artist Disillusionment: As he later revealed in an interview, Macaulay Culkin was physically and mentally exhausted by his acting career and had no enthusiasm for this film.
• Box Office Bomb: Budget, $40 million. Box office, $38,087,756. Although it ended up a home video success with over $125 million in VHS rentals.
• Completely Different Title: In countries where Richie Rich isn't as well known, this was changed to titles such as Rich Kid or Billionaire Boy.
  • The Czech release actually tries to go as far as connect this to Home Alone with a title that loosely translates to Home Alone and Wealthy.
• Cross-Dressing Voices: In the Japanese dub, Richie Rich was voiced by the female Masako Nozawa.
• Directed by Cast Member: In the Latin American Spanish dub, Carlos Becerril is the voice actor for Herbert Cadbury as well as the ADR Director.
• Fake Brit: Brisbane-born Australian actor Jonathan Hyde plays a very high-British Cadbury.
• Real-Life Relative: In the Latin American Spanish dub, Sylvia Garcel voices Regina Rich and her younger sister Rocío ^note  who previously voiced Richie in the Hanna-Barbera cartoon voices Claudia Schiffer.
• Star-Derailing Role: This was Macaulay Culkin's final film as a child actor. The five-movie string of critical and/or financial flops that started with The Good Son, along with Culkin hitting puberty, and his overbearing Stage Dad, led to him immediately withdrawing from the big screen after this dud. He wouldn't return until well into adulthood, and even then he only appears in smaller arthouse films.
• Studio Hop: Christmas Wish was produced by Saban Entertainment, and Warner still handled home video distribution. However, as part of the Saban library owned by Disney, they've attained the distribution rights, with the movie being one of Disney+'s launch titles.
• Technology Marches On: The lack of cell phones and computers make it clear this movie was made in the late 20th century. Nowadays, Richard Sr. would be checking his stocks through an app on his smartphone and Richie would be communicating with his dad through Bluetooth rather than the DadLink.
• What Could Have Been: John Cleese and David Thewlis were both considered for the role of Cadbury.

---