Following the theatrical release of "Fun and Fancy Free", Walt Disney Productions' bank debt declined from $4.2 million to $3 million. Around this time, Disney acknowledged the need for sound economic policies but emphasized to the loaners that slashing production would be suicidal. To restore the studio to full financial health, he expressed his desire to return to producing full-length animated films. By then, three animated projects—"Cinderella", "Alice in Wonderland", and "Peter Pan"—were in development. Disney felt the characters in "Alice in Wonderland" and "Peter Pan" was too cold, while "Cinderella" contained elements similar to "Snow White", and greenlit the project. Selecting his top-tier animation talent, Ben Sharpsteen was assigned as supervising producer while Hamilton Luske, Wilfred Jackson, and Clyde Geronimi became the sequence directors. Nevertheless, production on "Alice" resumed so that both animation crews would effectively compete against each other to see which film would finish first.