Comedian Knotts had won several Emmy Awards as small-town comic sheriff's deputy Barney Fife in the 1960-1968 television sitcom "The Andy Griffith Show" but left the show as a regular at the end of its fifth season (1964–1965) to pursue a career in feature films with Universal Pictures. "The Reluctant Astronaut" followed Knotts' first Universal film venture, "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken" (1966). Actor Paul Hartman appears in the film and would later star in "The Andy Griffith Show". The film's screenplay writers Jim Fritzell and Everett Greenbaum had served as teleplay writers for the television series.