Trivia / The Wind in the Willows (1996)

• Box Office Bomb: Cost £9.75 million to produce, and only grossed £1.303 million.
• Colbert Bump: The film, or at least the Villain Song, gained immense popularity on Youtube after Doug Walker included the song in his Top 11 Villains Songs list. One such video on Youtube had only around 2,000 views in one year before Doug mentioned it, and one year later, the same video had roughly 150,000 views.
• Invisible Advertising: In America it played on seven screens without advertising and the rights got dumped to Disney due to Columbia Pictures executives simply having no faith in it (the film's poor box-office in its native UK most likely was a factor).
• Market-Based Title: Disney's VHS and DVD release retitled the film to Mr Toad's Wild Ride, to tie into the Disney Theme Parks ride of the same name.
• Money, Dear Boy: Terry Jones admitted, in a foreword to sold copies of the movie's script, that this was why it was made. It had been over sixty years since Grahame had died, which meant the book was in the public domain.
• Screwed by the Network: The poor UK box office was apparently the result of UK cinemas only showing it as an afternoon matinee.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Terry Gilliam was asked to voice "The River", but busy filming schedules with 12 Monkeys kept him from joining the cast.
  • After Toad crashes the steam engine, Jones originally wrote in the script that the engine was upside down with the wheels still spinning. This effect was shot down immediately, as it was too expensive. It was ultimately replaced with a shot of only the tender visible sticking out of a ditch.

---