Longest production time for an animated film

Eventually released in US theatres in August 1995, The Thief and The Cobbler aka Arabian Knight had a production history that dated back to 1964, when London-based Canadian animator Richard Williams initially began working on an animated film based on the folk tales of 13th-century scribe Mulla Nasredeen. Over the course of the project’s 31-year gestation, the film underwent several name changes, numerous false starts and changes in preferred animation techniques, with three entirely separate sets of dialogue being recorded at different points in the production, while lengthy disagreements between Williams and the film’s distributor Miramax films delayed it even further.