Fairy Tales and Duct Tape: The Unlikely Origins of Hoodwinked!

Ugly, Charming, and Unforgettable

Let’s get one thing out of the way: Hoodwinked! is hideous.

Even in 2005, it looked like a cursed PS2 cutscene. Limbs bend the wrong way or don't bend at all, characters move like broken marionettes, and everyone has that plasticine glow that makes them look half-rendered. Stack it up next to Shrek, Madagascar, or The Incredibles — movies from the same era — and it’s a bloodbath.

And yet, I love it.

I watched Hoodwinked! religiously as a kid. It lived in my portable DVD player on road trips, in our trailer on rainy camping days, in the living room during sick days from school. I quoted it with friends, sang along with the goat, and cackled at every aside. It was one of my earliest exposures to non-linear storytelling — the kind of movie that gave me just a little taste of Pulp Fiction-style structure long before I even knew who Quentin Tarantino was.

What I didn’t realize back then was just how much of a miracle this film really was. Because while other studios were dumping $75–150 million into talking-animal blockbusters, the creators of Hoodwinked! were flipping couch cushions and collecting pennies off the sidewalk to build an entertaining movie for all-ages with nothing but a good script, a great cast, and a whole lot of heart.

Little Red Rashomon

At its core, Hoodwinked! is a fairy tale crime procedural. Think Law & Order: Fairy Tale Victims Unit.

The movie opens in medias res: Red Riding Hood arrives at Grandma’s house to find the Big Bad Wolf disguised in her bed. Chaos explodes — a hog-tied granny breaks out of the closet, a screaming woodsman crashes through the window, and the cops show up to sort out the mess.

But instead of ending the tale there, it’s only the beginning. Detective Nicky Flippers (David Ogden Stiers), a monocled frog in a pinstripe suit, arrives to interview the four suspects: Red, the Wolf, the Woodsman, and Granny. Each one offers their version of the story — revealing contradictions, hidden motives, and secrets that reshape our understanding of this classic fairy tale.

It’s essentially Rashomon X Looney Tunes, and it’s executed with surprising finesse. The script is witty as hell and layered with jokes for both kids and adults. It’s also endlessly quotable:

“Dee-na-mee-tay! Huh, must be Italian.”

“The avalanche is comin’, and I do not feel prepared!”

“I know about houses. l built mine out of straw. I'm not an idiot.”

And that kid scratching his brain with the schnitzel stick up his nose still haunts me to this day.

Indie Roots and Big Dreams

Cory and Todd Edwards weren’t exactly household names in the early 2000s. They were Tulsa-based indie filmmakers with a few commercials and music videos under their belts. After their debut feature Chillicothe did alright at Sundance in 1999, they moved to LA hoping to get something bigger off the ground.

Nothing really clicked until a fateful meeting with entrepreneur Maurice Kanbar, who was impressed by a CG short film Cory had made called Wobots. Kanbar pitched a simple idea: take a familiar story and give it a twist. A month later they came back with the idea for Hoodwinked! and Kanbar was immediately sold. He agreed to fully finance the film before even seeing a finished script.

No big studio. No distribution deal. Just a wild pitch and a blank cheque.

At the time, independently producing a CG-animated feature was practically unheard of. Pixar and DreamWorks had massive in-house animation tech and entire render farms. The Hoodwinked! team had Todd’s apartment and a couple of decent PCs.

Script First, Everything Else Later

Because they didn’t have the money to animate and re-animate scenes, the Hoodwinked! team had to get the story airtight before anyone touched a 3D model.

They built a story reel using nothing but Corey’s hand-drawn storyboards, scratch voice recordings (often from the creators and their family and friends themselves), and basic sound design — all stitched together in basic editing software by co-writer/director Tony Leech to create a complete rough cut of the entire movie. This DIY storyboard edit was used for feedback from actual neighborhood kids, whose reactions led to character tweaks and crucial saves.

Example: they almost cut the singing goat, Japeth, but every kid in the tests LOVED him. Japeth stayed, and thank the Lawd he did.

Twitchy the squirrel — the hyper-caffeinated, chipmunk-voiced sidekick to the Wolf — also emerged as a fan favourite thanks to these test runs, and received an expanded role. One standout moment has Twitchy drinking coffee for the first time, instantly going supersonic and incomprehensible until his voice is played back on a tape-recorder at quarter-speed to reveal a clear, elegant monologue.

It’s one of the funniest scenes in the movie, and a perfect example of how Hoodwinked! squeezes brilliance out of its limitations.

From Manila to the Mainstream

Okay, it’s numbers time.

Hoodwinked! was made for under $8 million. That’s one-tenth the budget of 2005 contemporaries like Madagascar or Robots, and a fraction of Chicken Little’s whopping $150 million price tag. Even other “indie” animations like Corpse Bride or Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit were made for $40 million and $30 million respectively.

To save money, production was outsourced to a self-founded production house in Manila called Digital Eye Candy. The problem though, is that hardly any of the animators had actual experience working in 3D animation or feature productions, so the producers had to teach them how to use the software as they worked. Throughout post-production, Cory Edwards made over a dozen trips to the Philippines, filming reference videos for the team, answering questions in person, and directing scenes on the fly. The results were rough around the edges, sure — but they got it done.

The animation has often been the film’s punching bag, but here’s the thing: it’s also part of its identity. The creators claim to have leaned into a slightly stop-motion, Rankin-Bass-esque stiffness to fit the limitations of their tools rather than work around them. Whether that was truly intentional or just a reasonable rationalization of the end result, it worked for the story they wanted to tell.

And here’s where Hoodwinked! really earns its flowers: it kicked down a door that’s only now being fully appreciated.

Today, we’re seeing a new wave of independently-produced animated films gaining critical acclaim and awards recognition with even smaller budgets. Films like Robot Dreams, Memoir of a Snail, and most recently Flow were all produced for less than half of Hoodwinked’s budget, even after adjusting for inflation and exchange rates. These films carry the torch of DIY, hand-cranked animation, and it’s hard not to see Hoodwinked! as one of the earliest sparks that helped light that fuse.

Big Stars, Big Constraints

Hoodwinked! features a surprisingly stacked cast — but not all of them were there from the start.

Patrick Warburton (Seinfeld, Family Guy, The Emperor's New Groove), as The Wolf, was there from the start after falling in love with the script. His deadpan sarcasm and iconic cadence gives the film some of its biggest laughs (“We just gonna sit around here and talk about how big I’m getting?”), and his delivery is so on point it feels tailor-made. Andy Dick (NewsRadio, The Andy Dick Show), too, brings a manic edge to Boingo the Bunny that evolves from zany to genuinely menacing in a way that’s way more effective than you'd expect for a candy-addled rabbit. Voice acting legends Tom Kenny (Spongebob Squarepants, Catdog, Adventure Time) and Tara Strong (The Fairly OddParents, The Powerpuff Girls, Teen Titans) also provided multiple voices, though not all of them would make the final cut.

After a near-finished cut of the film screened at the Cannes Film Festival of all places, it caught the attention of the newly-formed Weinstein Company. The problematic brothership saw picking up the film as an opportunity at “giving Disney a run for their money,” and a wave of recasting swept through the production. Anne Hathaway (Interstellar, Les Misérables) was brought in to voice Red; Glenn Close (The Big Chill, Fatal Attraction) became Granny; Jim Belushi (According to Jim, SNL) took over as the Huntsman; and the supporting police squad was filled out by the voices of Anthony Anderson (Transformers), Ken Marino (Wet Hot American Summer), Chazz Palminteri (The Usual Suspects), and even Xzibit (8 Mile).

Now, landing all these big names was cool and all, but recasting voice actors at this point in an animated production was highly unorthodox, and proved its own set of challenges. The animation was already locked. That meant these actors weren’t performing freely — they were essentially dubbing over existing reads from the original indie cast. No improv, no finding their own cadence. They had to match the timing and delivery of recordings made by friends and family of the filmmakers, right down to the pauses.

Cory Edwards has gone on record saying he regrets the original performers went uncredited in the final release. But the echoes of their performances remain in the final mix — and combined with the A-listers’ polish, it creates a strangely satisfying hybrid. Still, it’s a weirdly backwards way to produce an animated film, but it worked.

Box Office and Beyond

Hoodwinked! opened to $16 million — double its budget — and went on to gross over $110 million worldwide. That’s more than 13 times its production budget. It topped DVD sales charts on release, selling over 700,000 units in the first week. My family owned one of those copies, and I’ll die on the hill that it earned its place in our DVD cabinet right next to The Incredibles and The Spongebob Squarepants Movie.

Critics weren’t particularly kind. Most dunked on the animation, understandably, and some couldn’t see past the comparisons to Shrek. But even among the worst reviews, the script and performances received consistent praise.

Unfortunately, the sequel (Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil) wasn’t great, and squashed any potential for further franchising — though Cory has recently teased potential interest in a third installment. Without major studio backing, it was also somewhat buried by the other properties that were able to crank out multiple sequels, produce video-game or TV-series tie-ins, or sell toys and merch. It’s also not streaming ANYWHERE, so it’s practically impossible for a younger generation to discover for themselves — which is a shame, because it deserves better.

If Hoodwinked! had been released 5-years or a decade later, perhaps it could have been immortalized through memes, but all we can do now is spread the word and hope it finds its way back into public consciousness the next time society craves a hit of 2000’s nostalgia.

Legacy: A Cult Classic in Disguise

I re-watched the movie recently after being lucky enough to come across a used DVD at a thrift store, and I can confirm it still holds up. Even as an adult, the jokes hit and the writing is just as clever as I felt it was during the era I also thought Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was the best movie in the franchise. It’s weird. It’s janky. It’s full of heart. It takes big swings and makes the most of what it’s got.

It also holds a quiet kind of legacy — the kind that lives in the hearts of kids who were just the right age to see past the visual roughness and feel the energy underneath. Talk to anyone within a five-year age radius and chances are, they remember Hoodwinked! quite fondly. They might even quote it. ("Never trust a bunny!”)

This wasn’t just a weird off-brand fairy tale movie. This was a triumph of passion over polish, creativity over cash — turning coal into diamonds. In many ways, it’s the ultimate proof that a good story, told with love, can outshine even the fanciest animation tech.

Embrace the Imperfection

So if you were another one of those kids whose parents bought you the Hoodwinked! DVD for your birthday, or were one of the lucky few to see it in theaters, I implore you to go revisit it. Watch it not as a cursed relic of a bygone animation era, but as a wild, lovable testament to what passionate indie filmmakers can accomplish with a good script and a commitment to entertainment.

And if you’re one of the unlucky few who never got the chance to experience this hidden gem when it released two decades ago, I suggest you find a copy, dust it off, and see what you’ve been missing — you just might be surprised.