Trivia / Bernard and the Genie

• The Danza: Kevin (Bernard's so-called best friend who steals his girlfriend) is played by Kevin Bell.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The movie was released on VHS in 1993 but has never been released on DVD, save for a poor-quality German version. It can be found on YouTube, though, and has periodically been available to stream in Britain via the BritBox platform.
• Production Posse: It's written by Richard Curtis and starring Rowan Atkinson — those two having previously collaborated on Not the Nine O'Clock News, Blackadder and Mr. Bean; Curtis also had links with Lenny Henry, with whom he founded Comic Relief. Also in it is newsreader Vincent Hanna As Himself, several years after he appeared in an episode of Blackadder the Third.
• Word of God: Richard Curtis stated that he wrote it because he and his family had seen an Agatha Christie adaptation at Christmas and found it depressing; this inspired him to write a comedic Christmas movie. Decades later, Lenny Henry stated that the idea for Bernard and the Genie originated from a conversation he had with Curtis in which he pitched the idea of a story about a genie which subverted the racial undertones present in the fact that genies always seemed to be played by actors of colour. He thought no more of it, but several months later, Curtis gave him a draft script to read. It bore little relation to what Henry had said, other than the fact that it was about a genie. Henry found it hilarious. The rest is history.