Haley Joel Osment was attacked by the pig during filming. The lion had numerous trainers and handlers, but no one thought the pig might be a menace.

Since Haley Joel Osment went through puberty during filming, this movie was shot in sequence. As the movie progresses, his voice can be heard getting deeper, especially at the end.

In the fight scene with Robert Duvall against the four teens, Travis Willingham was hit three times in the face by Duvall. This was due to a miscommunication. Duvall reportedly told him afterwards that he thought Willingham was a stuntman and that he, Duvall, was supposed to hit him. The cut used was the final one, when Travis' nose finally started to bleed.

Sir Michael Caine said that early in his career, he once held Sir Sean Connery's hat while he fought and beat four men in a nightclub single-handedly. This may have been the inspiration for the scene in which Hub (Robert Duvall) also fights and defeats four men single-handedly, while Caine and Haley Joel Osment's characters watch.

Writer and director Tim McCanlies wrote the lion as a female because he thought it would be easier to keep under control than a male lion. It was not until production began that he found out female lions were actually much more ferocious than male lions.

Continuity

At the beginning of the movie, Hub and Garth are flying in their biplane. They fly past a police cruiser, in which the cop is sleeping. A view of the rearview mirror shows that the cop is already awake, but a second later we see him suddenly wake up.

When the family comes to visit Hub in the hospital scene, the youngest boy is seen entering the doorway first in one shot, then in the following shot he is seen pushing past his sister to enter again.

After the boys break slats out of the lion's crate, the size of the opening changes size in subsequent shots.

During Hub's fight with the teens, no one lays a hand or knife on him. At the end it can be clearly seen that Hub's shirt is whole. When they get back to the farm, he has several small knife holes in the upper left.

In the beginning when Walter comes across Jasmine's photo, he opens the trunk and we see mostly smooth sand. However, in the next shot where he is reaching down into the trunk, we see that a hand has already disturbed the sand.



Factual errors

After Walter and Jasmine have their fight, Walter is petting Jasmine and we hear Jasmine purring. The big cats, like lions and tigers, who roar, cannot purr. Non-roaring cats, like the cheetah, do purr. It has to do with their vocal cords.

In the fantasy sequence when the uncles were in the French Foreign Legion, Hub was wearing a white cap signifying he was enlisted and Garth was wearing a red cap signifying he was an officer. It would make more sense to their characters if Hub has been an officer and Garth had been the enlisted.



Incorrectly regarded as goofs

Hub refers to lions as living in the jungle. Even though this is technically incorrect as they live in the Savanna, not the jungle, it is an understandable error because lions are commonly referred to as the "King of the Jungle".



Revealing mistakes

The front porch of the house changes from scene to scene in the beginning. Initially the porch is all screened-in. The next shot has the screens at the back of the open porch. The next shot has the porch built out. But most of the time, the porch has the screens at the back of the squared off porch.

When Walter is drinking a root beer on the porch, Hub asks him if he is enjoying his root beer. The pronunciation he uses is that of a Midwesterner (ruit or r'it) as opposed to that of a southerner (root like rute).

The sections of the biplane have obviously been carefully inserted into precut holes made into the barn.



Miscellaneous

Walter's mother did not consider the postmark when she sent the letter to him.



Anachronisms

When Walter is running away down the lane, there is a pan of the field across from the house that shows large round bales of hay. The large round baler wasn't invented until the mid-1970s.

During the long shots around the uncles' house, there are modern day water towers on the horizon.

While Hub is fighting the teens in the diner there is a Coke machine in the background with the modern logo on it and its signature wave which dates to 1969 (should be all red with white Coca Cola lettering). Also visible is the pinball machine Odds & Evens which dates to 1973.



Audio/visual unsynchronized

At Saratoga Springs, Canada geese are shown landing. Instead of the distinctive "honk" of a goose, we hear ducks quacking.



Crew or equipment visible

When the lion is in the crate and they are going to shoot it you can see the chain holding the lion in the crate running down her chest partly exposed, they tried covering it up with fur, you can see it in several shots.

During the confrontation with Frankie in the bar, when Hub grabs Frankie's arm, a cameraman and camera lens is clearly seen on the extreme right-hand side of the frame in one shot in the DVD.



Plot holes

There is no logical reason for the two uncles to buy a live lion. They claim they want it for an animal target, implying it will be a sporting trophy. In fact, they train their rifles on it when the box is opened, obviously meaning to shoot it there and then. But this is no sport, they would not be hunting the lion just executing it, and even worse, in front of a child.



Character error

It's seems a bit farfetched that even country bumpkins wouldn't know what corn seed looks like. Even if they didn't, one would think they would have realized that every type of seed they planted looked the same. Yet when the plants are growing they suddenly realize they had nothing but corn.