Trivia / The Peanuts Movie

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• Acting for Two:
  • Francesca Capaldi voices both The Little Red-Haired Girl and Frieda.
  • Snoopy and Woodstock are both voiced by the late Bill Meléndez.
  • Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews provides the trombone voice effects for Miss Othmar and "Mrs. Little Red-Haired Girl".
• Actor-Shared Background: Francesca Capaldi, whose hair is both red and naturally curly, plays the Little Red-Haired Girl and Frieda.
• Author's Saving Throw: The movie contains a number of these for problems that fans had with the original comic strip and animated specials, most notably, toning down the Kafka Comedy. Chief among the examples is Charlie Brown's book report on War and Peace — in the special Happy New Year, Charlie Brown, a number of fans questioned what kind of teacher would make an eight-year-old kid read War and Peace and write a book report on it over Christmas break. (And then refuse to believe that the kid would have done it by himself). In The Peanuts Movie, Charlie Brown is the one who picks War and Peace to do a book report on, because he wants to impress the Little Red-Haired Girl and deliberately goes for what he's told is "the greatest book of all time," and he does it all himself because the Little Red-Haired Girl was sick. Charlie Brown's Butt-Monkey status is still there, but played more dramatically, as tragically, a gust of wind slips the book report paper out of his hands into the air, right into the path of the model of The Red Baron's plane, which shreds the paper.
• Celebrity Voice Actor:
  • Fifi is voiced by Kristin Chenoweth, who won a Tony Award for playing Sally in the 1999 Broadway revival of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown.
  • The Little Red-Haired Girl is voiced by Francesca Capaldi, best known to tweens for being on Dog with a Blog, a show that knows a thing or two about anthropomorphic canines.
  • In the Japanese dub, the Little Red-Haired Girl is dubbed by Mana Ashida, whom many non-Japanese viewers can remember her as young Mako Mori.
  • Unlike the previous TV specials, which used the same archival sounds of the trombone for the adults, this film has some newer trombone speaking courtesy of celebrated New Orleans jazz musician Trombone Shorty.
• Children Voicing Children:
  • The Japanese dub of the film deserves a special mention: Unlike previous dubs of the franchise, when adult or teenage voice actors voiced the characters, child voice actors voiced all the child characters for the first time in Japan.
  • Ditto in the Latin American Spanish dub, when almost all the child cast is voiced by actual kids.
• Channel Hop: When Disney acquired 20th Century Studios, they acquired this film as well. As such, it is the only filmed adaptation of the Peanuts franchise to be made available for streaming outside of the rest of the productions, which were made exclusively available on Apple TV+. Due to 20th producing the film in the first place, this is also the only Peanuts film not to be distributed by Paramount, who holds the first two movies through CBS, and directly handled the third and fourth themselves. Ironically though, 20th released the first two movies overseas.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: Some of the movie's marketing claims that this is the first time the Peanuts characters have ever been on the big screen, despite the fact that there have been a total of four theatrical Peanuts movies released from the 1960s to the 1980s. Screwed by the Lawyers might be in effect here – those four other films are owned by the various subdivisions of the Viacom conglomerate.^note  The first two are owned by CBS via their now defunct "Cinema Center Films" division. Paramount Pictures owns the third and fourth films directly, and they have home video rights to the first two as well. The Peanuts Movie comes via 20th Century Fox, so they probably can't legally acknowledge the earlier movies. It is the first movie to use the "Peanuts" name, as well as the first all-CGI Peanuts movie.
• Deleted Scene:
  • An original version of the Talent Contest would've included Lucy interfering with Schroeder's Beethoven act because she apparently thinks the performance is disastrous. It was cut because it took too long to build up and wasn't considered funny enough for the film. You can see the storyboards with the description of the story artist.
  • When the kids see Charlie Brown entering the school, they're disappointed because of his presence. It was changed to make the kids disappointed that it wasn't the new kid, as they expected.
• Executive Meddling: A case where this made the movie better: The Schulz estate had an eagle's eye over the movie's entire production, to make sure the film stayed true to Schulz's creation. Two of the film's writers, Craig and Bryan Schulz, are Sparky's respective son and grandson.
• Kids' Meal Toy: McDonald's released a set of twelve different toys in their Happy Meals.
• Market-Based Title: Outside North America, many countries include Snoopy in the movie's title somewhere due to him being more well-known than the rest of the cast:
  • In the UK, the other parts of Europe, and Australia, the title is Snoopy and Charlie Brown: A Peanuts Movie.
  • In France, the title is Snoopy and the Peanuts: The Movie.
  • In Japan, the title is I Love Snoopy: The Peanuts Movie.
  • In Italy, the title is Snoopy and Friends: il film dei Peanuts.
  • The title remained The Peanuts Movie when shown on North American premium cable broadcasts, but then became Snoopy: The Peanuts Movie on North American basic cable broadcasts.
• Posthumous Credit: Bill Meléndez, the longtime voice of Snoopy and Woodstock, died in September 2008. However, the film used previously-recorded voice clips of Melendez as a way to have him "reprise" his roles.
• Real-Life Relative: Zoé Ivanna Mora, the Latin American Spanish voice actress for Lucy, is the daughter of the film's dubbing director, Moisés Iván Mora.
• Role Reprise: Via archive audio, the late Bill Meléndez reprises his roles as Snoopy and Woodstock from the previous Peanuts TV specials and films.
• Stillborn Franchise: Since the film was a critical and commercial success, 20th Century Studios has expressed interest in a sequel. Unfortunately, they only had the rights to make one film and the Schulz estate, while pleased with the result, never gave the green light before Blue Sky’s closure in 2021, and even then the latter signed a deal with Apple TV+ to create new Peanuts content for them exclusively, making a true follow up, let alone another theatrically released Peanuts film, unlikely. Ultimately however, Apple and Wildbrain would create a new Peanuts movie in the same style as this one in the mid-2020s.
• What Could Have Been:
  • An original storyboard shows Charlie Brown had a paper plane in his head and the book report in his hand, and the paper plane would've hit Lucy in her face. She would then take away Charlie Brown's book report, turning into a paper plane, throwing it to the air and then it would be destroyed in pieces by the Red Baron model plane. Apparently, none of the kids seem to care what they just witnessed.
  • Earlier drafts had Snoopy's siblings appearing in his World War I novel, filling a similar role to the bird mechanic crew.
  • Concept art shows that the group of carolers Snoopy infiltrates would have consisted of cameos of lesser-known Peanuts characters, such as Eudora and Tapioca Pudding.
  • Snoopy was originally planned to have the primary plot of the film, with Charlie Brown being relegated to a secondary story.
  • According to ex-BlueSky animator Michael Berardini, Charlie Brown was originally planned to have visible blonde hair unlike the comic strips and cartoons. However, the team found he looked weird with full hair and felt it was best to leave him unchanged, Charlie Brown Baldness and all.

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