Trivia / Mr. Peabody & Sherman

• Acclaimed Flop: Despite its good critical and audience reception, the movie only made back its budget thanks to international grosses and underperformed at the box office. It lost DreamWorks $57 million and also became the studio's lowest-grossing CGI film since its very first production, Antz, and that film was a modest success.
• Acting for Two: In the Rocky and Bullwinkle tradition, several of the minor characters are voiced by the same person- for example, Jess Harnell voices a few presidents and a cop.
• Awesome, Dear Boy: Being a big fan of Peabody's Improbable History segment, Rob Minkoff had been wanting to make a feature-film adaptation for years.
• Creator Killer: The one-three punch of this film, Turbo and Penguins of Madagascar led to PDI getting shuttered and 500 DWA employees, including CCO Bill Damaschke and COO Mark Zoradi, getting laid off. It also started the dominoes falling to Jeffrey Katzenberg selling the firm to Comcast without him being attached to it (the other attempts to sell DWA had Katzenberg going through with his studio had they panned out).
• Feelies: When the film was first released on Blu-ray, a Walmart exclusive edition was packaged with a Mr. Peabody plushie.
• Kids' Meal Toy: McDonald's released a set of six puzzles and mazes in their Happy Meals.
• Missing Trailer Scene: The "butt of that joke" line was nowhere to be found in the film, and neither was a small moment where Marie Antoinette held up Sherman and spun him.
• Playing with Character Type: Ariel Winter is known for voicing Nice Girl characters like Marina and Sofia. In this movie, she voices Penny Peterson, who is very mean and condescending, but she gradually becomes a better person and shows that she cares for Sherman.
• Those Two Actors: Ty Burrell & Ariel Winter worked together on Modern Family before appearing in this film.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Originally there was going to be a live-action film but due to the Box-Office failure of both Dudley Do-Right and The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle the idea was scrapped.
  • Robert Downey Jr. was originally cast as Mr. Peabody, but backed out due to scheduling conflicts. Dan Aykroyd, Kelsey Grammer, Tony Hale, Matthew McConaughey, Kevin Pollak, Freddie Prinze Jr. and Geoffrey Rush were also considered.
  • Michelle Trachtenberg was considered to voice Patty Peterson.
  • There was originally going to be a Rocky and Bullwinkle short preceding this movie during its theatrical run. It featured Tom Kenny as Bullwinkle and June Foray (in what turned out to be her final role) reprising her role as Rocky, and was directed by one of the directors of Beauty and the Beast and written by Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant. However, it was bumped in favor of an extended preview of a new DreamWorks property, Home (2015). Thankfully, the short was released when the film hit home media, though only as an extra on the 3D Blu-ray release.
  • Mel Brooks was going to have a whole scene as Sigmund Freud. It was cut because Brooks was so funny that he upstaged the other characters and the plot came to a halt. In the final cut, he's Albert Einstein instead.

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