and leading up to the film's release, producer David Lovegren said, "Six or seven years ago, the idea of doing Hoodwinked! as an independent [animated] feature would have been impossible". The filmmakers only made the film independently by necessity, and Cory Edwards has said, "It's not a model to be followed. It was a once-in-a-lifetime, seat-of-your-pants kind of thing that just barely came off." However, he added that the process was worth going through to get the film made and encouraged aspiring filmmakers to be willing to follow it. Development After a number of years spent producing commercials and music videos in Tulsa, brothers Cory and Todd Edwards founded their own production company, Blue Yonder Films. Joined by their friends producers Brad Knull, Robert Yanovitch and Preston Stutzman, who also led marketing for the company. The group released their first feature film, Chillicothe, at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival. Emboldened by this success, the company then moved to Los Angeles in the hopes of producing a sophomore film. Blue Yonder evolved as Knull and Yanovitch left to pursue other interests, and new opportunities for the remaining three partners proved elusive at first. An associate producer on Chillicothe, Sue Bea Montgomery, sought out studios that might want to work with the trio; she was met with indifference and determined that Blue Yonder Films would have to further establish itself on the independent scene before anyone would take interest. Montgomery then set up a meeting between the filmmakers and Maurice Kanbar, a successful entrepreneur who had made a minor investment in Chillicothe. The Edwards brothers pitched a number of ideas for live-action films to Kanbar and proposed a development deal that would have entailed Kanbar paying the group and covering their rent in exchange for a significant portion of the rights to any scripts that Blue Yonder Films ever sold. Kanbar, however, was interested in a more direct approach, preferring to focus efforts on getting a single film produced. He had always admired animation, and after seeing a direct-to-DVD computer-animated short film that Cory had made called Wobots, suggested the possibility of producing an animated feature with Blue Yonder Films, one that would tell a familiar narrative with a twist. Kanbar gave the group a month to come up with a story idea. Although Kanbar expressed interest in producing a retelling of Cinderella or Pinocchio, the Edwards brothers insisted on avoiding stories