Cannon Movie Tales is the collective name for a series of live-action films created in the late 1980s by Cannon Group producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, associate producer Patricia Ruben, and executive producer Itzik Kol. Filmed principally on location in Israel, these stories are generally fairy tales based on material by either the Brothers Grimm or Charles Perrault, among others. Major stars, from both the United States and the United Kingdom, play the leading roles, in which they are joined by a mostly all-Israeli cast. The major Israeli-born member of the crew was the series' production designer, Marek Dobrowolski. Announced as early as May 1986 (at the Cannes Film Festival),[2] Cannon initiated the project as its answer to Disney's fairy-tale offerings, and invested US$50 million in the series.[3] Sixteen stories (originally planned to be twelve stories), each costing US$1.5 million,[1] were originally planned;[3][4][5] only nine were released.
Of the nine films, only eight have been released on DVD by MGM in the United States. The Frog Prince has only been officially released on VHS.[6] Although there is no "Complete Collection" DVD box set, the eight individual DVD releases have been collected (as five dual-sided discs) in the "MGM Movie Collection: 10 Kids Movies" DVD set[7] (one of several sets with this generic title), which also includes the unrelated fantasy films Jack the Giant Killer (1962) and The Magic Sword (1962).
