Trivia / Jetsons: The Movie

• Acting for Two:
  • Jeff Bergman provided the remaining dialogue for Mr. Spacely and George after the deaths of Mel Blanc and George O'Hanlon, in addition to voicing Elroy's gym teacher.
  • Frank Welker voices all of the Grungies.
• Box Office Bomb: Budget, $8 million (plus $12 million for prints and advertising). Box office, $20,305,841. Salvaged by home video sales.
• Creator Backlash: Jon McClenahan, who did some additional work on the film, is not fond of it, calling it "the worst animated feature film ever made" and considers it an Old Shame.
• Cross-Dressing Voices: Teddy-2 was voiced by Dana Hill.
• The Danza: Besides George O'Hanlon as George Jetson, D.J. Rick Dees has a small role as "Rocket Rick", who is also a D.J.
• Died During Production: This marked the final performances of Mel Blanc and George O'Hanlon before their deaths while the film was in production. O'Hanlon actually suffered his fatal stroke in the recording studio mere minutes after recording his last few lines, while Blanc recorded most of his lines in the hospital where he eventually passed away.
• Executive Meddling:
  • Of the worst kind. After recording all of her dialogue for Judy Jetson, Universal threw out Janet Waldo's performance and replaced her with 80s pop star Tiffany, who was under contract by the studio's record label MCA at the time. Waldo was not told until the premiere and was understandably upset at the news, but ultimately held no ill-will towards anyone over it. George O'Hanlon and Mel Blanc were similarly livid and they unsuccessfully demanded that Waldo be re-cast only to fall on deaf ears and worsen their already declining health. Andrea Romano was so offended that she demanded her name be removed from the credits.
  • According to composer John Debney, he had to persuade the executives to let him use the traditional Jetsons theme song for the opening titles. They all wanted to replace it with a Tiffany song.
• Franchise Killer: Coming on the heels of the 1980s Jetsons revival (the new syndicated episodes and two TV movies), this film's disappointing box office receipts and poor reviews from critics were apparently enough to send the franchise back into hibernation outside reruns and video games. It stayed there for a quarter of a century, a potential live-action film being stuck in Development Hell for years notwithstanding. Finally, in 2015, both an animated theatrical film and direct to video crossover with WWE were announced by WB, with the latter coming out in 2017, only for the former to stay in Development Hell.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Thanks to rights issues (Universal owned the movie outright while Hanna-Barbera still controlled the Jetsons property), the movie didn't get a legal DVD release until 2009. Before then, only the occasional pay-television airings and the VHS release were the legal means of watching the movie.
  • The full version of "Gotcha", the song that plays as George makes his way to work, has never been released. Not even on the soundtrack album.
• Kids' Meal Toy: Wendy's sold a set of four promotional cups.
• Missing Trailer Scene: The trailer includes a shot of Mr. Spacely throwing himself on his desk and having a tantrum, apparently just after Rudy-2 signed off. This shot is not in the final film.
• Non-Singing Voice: The original plan for Judy Jetson was that Janet Waldo and Tiffany would be doing her speaking and singing voices respectively. This was not unprecedented, by the way. Two years before this, the 1988 TV movie Rockin' with Judy Jetson featured B. J. Ward as Judy's singing voice alongside Waldo as her speaking voice. However, Tiffany was considered a big star at the time, and once she was onboard, the executives became enamored with the idea of her doing the entire role.
• The Other Darrin:
  • An unfortunate side effect of the fact that the voice actors were mostly in their late 60s or older when the film began production;^note  By the autumn of 1988, Mel Blanc and Penny Singleton were 80, George O'Hanlon was 75, Daws Butler had died at 72, Janet Waldo and Jean Vander Pyl were 69, and Don Messick was the "baby" of the cast at 62. Within ten years of the film's release, Singleton and Waldo were the only ones still alive; Singleton died in 2003, Waldo in 2016. the only original cast members to complete their performances and see them used in the finished film were Penny Singleton (Jane), Jean Vander Pyl (Rosie), and Don Messick (Astro). Daws Butler (Elroy) died before he could record any lines, so he was replaced by Patric Zimmerman. Mel Blanc (Mr. Spacely) and George O'Hanlon (George) died during production, so the few unrecorded lines they had left were done by Jeff Bergman. And most infamously, Tiffany replaced Janet Waldo (Judy) after the latter had already recorded all her lines for the film.
  • The Latin American Spanish dub of the 80s series got it worse in the film: Not only the entire Mexican cast was replaced, the whole movie was dubbed by Intersound, Inc. in Los Angeles, with an awful reception in Latin America.
  • Basically, almost every foreign dub has changed voice actors between the 60s, 80s and movie versions, mainly due to the time gap between them.
  • The Japanese dub is a downplayed example of this, at least with the dub voice of Mr. Spacely: He was voiced by Ichirō Nagai in both the 60s and 80s versions. In the movie, he was voiced by Kosei Tomita instead.
• The Other Marty: Janet Waldo had already recorded her lines as Judy, but Universal had Tiffany rerecord them.
• Release Date Change: Originally scheduled for a Christmas 1989 release, the release was delayed until summer of 1990 so as to avoid competition with The Little Mermaid, All Dogs Go to Heaven, Back to the Future Part II, and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Universal released The Wizard to fill the void.
• Rereleased for Free: The movie was free on Peacock from 2021 to sometime in 2022 before it was removed entirely.
• Stunt Casting: The aforementioned example of '80s pop starlet Tiffany as Judy Jetson. Ironically, her popularity had nosedived by the time the film was released.
• Troubled Production: Daws Butler (Elroy Jetson) had died before production began, so he was hastily replaced by Patric Zimmerman. George O'Hanlon (George Jetson) had to have his lines repeated to him due to his stroke, and could only record for an hour at a time. In addition, both he and Mel Blanc (Mr. Spacely) died during production (George reportedly died of a second stroke in the sound booth), so Jeff Bergman had to finish some of their lines. There was also severe Executive Meddling by Universal such as replacing Janet Waldo with pop singer Tiffany as the voice of Judy Jetson, and by making it a musical due to their growing popularity in the late 80's. All of this caused the film to bomb at the box office, and kill off The Jetsons series for more than three decades.
• Uncredited Role: Andrea Romano was so outraged by Universal replacing Janet Waldo as Judy's VA with Tiffany that she removed her name from the credits.

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