Trivia / Wizards

• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: No, not once did Bakshi call the film "A FAMILY Picture" in the commentary track. AniMat can attest to that, with the closest thing he could find was "this is my first kids movie, my first family film."
• Creator's Oddball: Unlike his previous urban-oriented works focusing on sex and drugs, Wizards was Bakshi's first fantasy film and his first movie to receive a PG rating (although sexual innuendo and violence are in the film).^note This was before the creation of the PG-13 rating; the PG rating is also Bakshi’s lowest rating for a movie.
• Executive Meddling: A few months after its release, Fox pulled the film from theaters, despite impressive box office numbers, to give Star Wars a wider release. However, Bakshi claims to have never resented this because by that point, the film had broke even and he was happy that his friend George Lucas's film was doing so well.
• No Budget: $1 million may sound like a lot in 1977 dollars, but it's positively shoestring for a theatrically-released, animated feature. For comparison, Disney's The Rescuers was a low-budget animated production from the same year, and it cost seven and a half times as much to make. Not only was this the reason for the movie's liberal use of Stock Footage, but Bakshi even went as far as to avoid paying for the material in order to keep from going over budget. According to the DVD commentary of the film, a large factor for its low cost was that 75% of its animation was done by veteran Tom and Jerry artist Irv Spence, and if it wasn't for his work, Ralph would never have been able to complete Wizards.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The title was originally War Wizards, but was changed at the request of George Lucas as to not cause confusion with his new upcoming film to be released soon afterwards, Star Wars. Bakshi agreed to this as not only were the two friends at the time, it was considered a trade for Lucas having allowed Mark Hamill time off the filming of Star Wars to do voicework for Wizards.
  • Bakshi intended to make a sequel with Blackwolf's son picking up where his father left off.

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