By India McCarty
Benj Thall looked back on the making of beloved childhood classic HOMEWARD BOUND, from fighting for the emotional moments of the movie to its impact on viewers today.
“[It was] the little movie that could,” he told PEOPLE of 1993’s HOMEWARD BOUND: THE INCREDIBLE JOURNEY, a movie that follows three pets who go on a journey to reunite with their owners.
Despite it being a Disney movie, HOMEWARD BOUND had a small budget and was “also sort of shot outside, in a way, of the studio eyes.”
“I think it’s become the classic [it is] because there was just such craft and care and time,” Thall explained, adding that, unbeknownst to him, director Duwayne Dunham even fought the studio to keep one of Thall’s more emotional scenes in the movie.
Related: HOMEWARD BOUND: THE INCREDIBLE JOURNEY
“Duwayne told the story to me — I didn’t hear until five years ago, that the studio was nervous about a 13-year-old boy crying to his mom,” Thall said of one memorable scene. “And they were like, ‘A boy wouldn’t do that.’ But a human being would do that.”
He continued, “And so [Duwayne] fought for these moments in the film that I think are what make it hold up so well and that you really carry on the journey of not only the animals, but the family that loves the animals so much…and it’s what makes it so…I mean, I still get emotional watching that.”
Thall also reflected on the enduring legacy of HOMEWARD BOUND, saying, “I think at a young age, I wasn’t able to understand the impact that the movie would have. Now I certainly do because it’s loved all over the world. I have fans from international countries, messages I have to get translated. And I think it’s timeless in a sense.”
In another interview with PEOPLE, Thall revealed that the cast and crew of the movie are still close. He stays in touch with onscreen siblings Veronica Lauren and Kevin Chevalia and said he still has a “really, really strong relationship” with actor Robert Hays, who played his father in the movie.
In a 2025 interview with Eye For Film, Dunham spoke about the family aspect of making a movie.
“Making a film is creating a family and the reward for making that movie is the family,” he shared. “At the end of the day, you’ve gone through something incredibly difficult and anybody who succeeds in making a movie, forget whether it’s good or not, if you got it made, you deserve an award…A movie is a life cycle of birth and death. You breathe life into something and then poof, it’s over, and where’d everybody go? Well, you wrangle them up again and do another one.”
HOMEWARD BOUND remains a classic children’s movie to this day with viewers all over the world relating to its heartfelt message.
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