The Walt Disney Company sued Filmation Associates for defamation and trademark infringement, but was ruled against on the basis that Carlo Collodi's 1883 novel "The Adventures of Pinocchio" was in public domain.
In early 1985, Filmation Associates announced plans to produce a series of 13 animated films under the umbrella title of "Filmation's New Classics Collection". They were to be feature-length stories to be distributed in theaters, on video and then sold for television broadcast and possible spin-off series. The titles were: "The New Adventures of Pinocchio", "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfelles", "The Challenge of Cinderella", "Time Machine II: The Man Who Saved the Future", "Bambi: Prince of the Forest". "20 Million Leagues Across the Universe", "Frankenstein Lives Again!", "The Further Adventures of Gulliver", "The Son of Sleeping Beauty", "L. Frank Baum's The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus", "The Continuing Adventures of the Jungle Book", "New Tales of Arabian Nights" and "Alice Returns to Wonderland". The Walt Disney Company sued Filmation before production had even started for proposing to make sequels to their classic films and in the end, only "Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night" and Happily Ever After (1989) were produced.
Shirley Jones, the actress well known for playing the mother on The Partridge Family (1970) (among many others projects) originally played the Fairy Godmother. Partway through recording she pulled out of the project.
Due to her departure mid-production, there was a rush to find a new voice for the character. After several actresses/singers turned down the role, pop singer Rickie Lee Jones took the role.
Filmation was developing a spin-off TV series called ''Bugzburg' starring a mechanical cricket when the studio was bought up by L'Oreal and closed down in 1989. According to Lou Scheimer in the book "Creating the Filmation Generation", all 65 episodes of Bugzburg had already been written, all designs completed, all the voices had been recorded and at least two episodes had been finished when the plug was pulled.
Edward Asner's theatrical voice acting debut, later he'd go onto voice Scowl in Happily Ever After (1989), Jacob Marley's Ghost in A Christmas Carol (1997), Carl Fredricksen in Up (2009) and Mr. Leonard in Foodfight! (2012).