that had already been defined by Disney. Several ideas were considered by the brothers. Cory suggested Little Red Riding Hood, describing it as a story "so simple that you can go a lot of different directions with it", and within a few days, inspiration came to Todd through non-linear crime dramas, such as Rashomon, Pulp Fiction, Run Lola Run and Memento. Todd's proposal to retell Little Red Riding Hood as a police investigation, exploring the narrative through multiple points of view, was embraced by Kanbar, who agreed to fully finance the film before seeing a finished script. Kanbar's initial plan was to release the film directly to DVD. In 2002, Kanbar and Montgomery joined together in founding Kanbar Entertainment and Kanbar Animation, independent production studios that teamed with Blue Yonder Films for the production of Hoodwinked! Cory served as the film's main director, as he had more experience with animation, comedy, and children's entertainment, while Todd served as co-director. Montgomery and Stutzman were joined by Disney animation veteran David Lovegren as producers on the film, and Cory's and Todd's sister Katie Hooten joined as an associate producer. Tony Leech, who had worked with the Edwards brothers on Chillicothe, was initially hired as an editor, but gained story input as well. He eventually proved to be so valuable to the production that he was given a role as co-director. Pre-production The filmmakers found independently producing the film to have both benefits and challenges. Although they were given a great amount of creative control by their executive producer Maurice Kanbar, their small budget kept them from making potentially beneficial changes to the story once production was underway. Todd Edwards related that "Money doesn't just buy you more talent and more machinery, it also buys you flexibility on a story level. At Disney, if they don't like the third act, they just throw the whole thing out and re-animate the whole thing, even if it's finished ... We had no such luxury, and so in a way, you're watching our first version of the movie." Knowing ahead of time their inability to alter the film's script once animating had begun, an effort was made by the filmmakers to finalize the script as much as possible before the start of production, which is not a common practice for studio-produced animated films. Turning away from the well-known archetypes of the Little Red Riding Hood characters,