The plan for the original film was considerably different from what was released. Numerous characters and plot points, many of which came from the original novel, were used in early drafts. Walt Disney was displeased with the work that was being done and called a halt to the project midway into production so that the concept could be rethought and the characters redesigned. It was at this stage that the character of the cricket was expanded. Jiminy Cricket, voiced by Cliff Edwards, became central to the story.

The song “When You Wish Upon a Star,” became a major hit and is still identified with the film, and later as a fanfare for Walt Disney Studios itself. Pinocchio also won the Academy Award for Best Song and the Academy Award for Best Scoring of a Musical Picture. The film has been deemed “culturally significant” by the Library of Congress and in 1994 was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry, and in the second slot, behind only Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, in the American Film Institute’s Top ten Animated Feature Films of all time in 2008. The film is constantly considered the greatest film in the animation medium, despite the inital failure