Trivia / Felix the Cat: The Movie

• Acting for Two: Peter Newman as the Duke of Zill, Wack Lizardi and Pim.
• Box Office Bomb: Budget, $9 million. Box office, $1,964,253.
• Channel Hop: New World Pictures originally picked the film up shortly after its completion and planned a Thanksgiving 1987 release but that didn't happen. Not helping matters was their serious financial issues that prevented certain upcoming films from being released, including Felix. By 1991, the film ended up at Buena Vista Home Video and went Direct to Video. Columbia TriStar Home Video would rerelease the film a few years later. As of 2020, the US rights to the movie are with Felix owner Universal Studios (on behalf of DreamWorks Animation), whilst the international rights are under Lakeshore Entertainment, the owner of the New World Pictures catalog.
• Colbert Bump: The movie already had something of a cult status, but it suddenly got a lot more attention online after the Nostalgia Critic reviewed it, which caused its cult following to skyrocket.
• Cross-Dressing Voices: Poindexter was voiced by Alice Playten.
• Descended Creator: Don Oriolo wrote the songs and performed several of them himself, including also playing guitar on "Who Is The Boss?"
• Doing It for the Art: Say whatever you want about the quality of the movie, but it really was a labor of love by Don Oriolo. The Felix series was all but dead by the time it was released, and his dad was too ill to make a new Felix movie, so Don took it on himself to get a Felix the Cat movie made just to carry on Otto Messmer and Joe's legacy and revitalize interest in the character. Even in spite of its quiet release, it at least succeeded in its goal of getting people interested in the Felix franchise again.
• Franchise Killer: This was the last we would ever see Felix the Cat in a theatrical film or short possibly for a long time.
• In Memoriam: The film was dedicated to Joe Oriolo who died 4 years prior to the film's release.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • The movie is only known to have had one official Region 1 DVD release in the early 2000s by one Top Ten New Media Production Limited HKSAR, however it went out of print fast and most second-hand copies go for outrageous prices online. For a long time, the only other ways to view it were to either view a bootleg copy, to try to track down a VHS copy of the film, or to import the Australian or British DVD releases. On November 17, 2023, the film was uploaded in HD, but cropped to widescreen, to the official Felix the Cat YouTube channel, but it was privated no more than a couple months later.
  • The New World Pictures logo at the beginning is only known to be intact on the British VHS release, the American demo tape release, and the British DVD release. There is also a version of the movie that actually lets the saxophone solo at the very end finish up before the music fades out; this version is only known to be on the Canadian VHS release from Columbia TriStar Home Video.
  • The situation with the soundtrack was even worse. Due to the movie bombing, the soundtrack was simply never released, and the only way to listen to the tunes was to watch the movie itself or, after the advent of YouTube, to hear cleaned-up attempts by fans. The soundtrack was finally released digitally... in 2014, more than two decades after the fact.
• No Budget: The animation was outsourced to Germany and Hungary in order to keep the movie from going over its $9 million budget, and it shows.
• The Shelf of Movie Languishment: The film technically was finished as early as 1987, but wasn't released until 1991 due to original distributor New World Pictures' financial issues and subsequent dissolution.
• Short Run in Peru: The film was released in a few foreign markets like the UK before (eventually) coming to the USA.
• Throw It In!: The line of the monster quoting A Streetcar Named Desire was ad-libbed by Don Oriolo, who provided his voice.
• What Could Have Been:
  • While Don Oriolo wrote the script, he originally wanted his father, Joe Oriolo, to direct the film. But the elderly Joe was ill and in no shape to be making a feature-length Felix the Cat movie, so he passed on the responsibility to Don to direct the film (albeit Don's inexperience as an animation director meant that he ultimately ended up taking on the producer's role instead, with Tibor Hernádi directing).
  • The Duke of Zill originally had a different design, which can be seen in the trailer at 1:05.
  • This movie acted as a pilot for a planned TV show but due to its lack of release and negative responses from critics, audiences, and fans, that never happened. Until the Twisted Tales six years later.
• Comic-Book Adaptation: There was a comic adaption of this film which was only sold in Germany, it was Google Translated by TheGreatAllie. The Google Drive link became broken since 2020 and it became lost media until it was saved by TheGreatAllie's YouTube channel TheCleverArachnid.