Trivia / The Country Bears

• Acting for Two:
  • Diedrich Bader voices Ted Bedderhead and portrays Officer Cheets.
  • Terri Hardin is the puppeteer for Trixie and Big Al, as well as a Honey Bar patron.
  • Julianne Buescher is Tennessee's puppeteer and also appears as a waitress at the Honey Bar.
• Awesome, Dear Boy: According to his friend Colin Mochrie, Diedrich Bader was in the make-up room with Christopher Walken, so Bader asked Walken what films he was working on after Country Bears. Walken responded saying he was going to be in Catch Me If You Can with Tom Hanks and Leonardo Dicaprio. Bader reacted with amazement, saying that it is surely a giant leap from working on this movie to a Steven Spielberg movie with a star-studded cast. Walken casually responded with "Well, they're both good scripts".
• Box Office Bomb: Was made on a $35 million budget, but made only $18 million at the American box office.
• Direct to Video: The film flopped so bad in the U.S., it was released straight to video in the UK in 2003.
• Kids' Meal Toy: McDonald's sold a set of eight plushes of the bears in their Happy Meals.
• Non-Singing Voice: Elizabeth Daily, John Hiatt, Bonnie Raitt and Don Henley provided their respective singing voices for Beary, Ted, Trixie and Tennessee.
• Posthumous Credit: Though Country Bear Jamboree creator Marc Davis died in 2000, he's given a "thanks" credit at the end of the film.
• Production Posse: Jess Harnell and Paul Rugg both make cameos, the latter as a news anchor; they had both worked with director Peter Hastings at both Warner Bros. and Disney.
• Stillborn Franchise: There were plans for a sequel involving The Country Bears touring Europe, but it was scrapped due to the film's critical and box office failure.
• Wag the Director: Regarding Christopher Walken's infamous line "This is not over... bears!", Colin Mochrie once said in a Whose Line Is It Anyway? video chat that Diedrich Bader (who stars in this film) revealed that Walken delivered the line that way in every take (they did about three takes) despite the director pleading with Walken to not do the line in that manner.
• What Could Have Been: It was rumored that if this film was a success, they would possibly retheme the Country Bear Jamboree to the film, but the idea was scrapped.