Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland (released in Japan as simply Nemo (ニモ, Nimo) and credited in some territories as Little Nemo) is a 1989 Japanese-American animated musical-comedy adventure fantasy film directed by Masami Hata and William Hurtz. Based on the comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland by Winsor McCay, the film went through a lengthy development process with a number of screenwriters. Ultimately, the screenplay was credited to Chris Columbus and Richard Outten; the storyline and art style differed from the original version. The original soundtrack was penned by the Academy Award-winning Sherman Brothers. The film features the English dub voices of Gabriel Damon, Mickey Rooney, René Auberjonois, Danny Mann, and Bernard Erhard. The movie was infamous for being in development hell with many people, some of whom worked at Disney and others who worked on Star Wars, some of the people who worked on Looney Tunes, as well as some people who would later found Studio Ghibli, figures such as George Lucas, Chuck Jones, Ray Bradbury, Isao Takahata, Brad Bird, Jerry Rees, Chris Columbus, Ken Anderson, Frank Thomas, Oliver Johnston, Paul Julian, Osamu Dezaki, the Sherman Brothers (Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman), Hayao Miyazaki (who was working at TMS at the time), and Gary Kurtz being involved with the movie before all dropping out. The film was first released in Japan on July 15, 1989 by the Toho-Towa and in the United States on August 21, 1992 by the Hemdale Film Corporation. It received mixed to positive reviews from publications including the Washington Post, Variety, the New York Post, the Boston Globe, and The New York Times, earned $11.4 million on a $35 million