Director Joe Camp made this film in response to the overabundance of low-quality family films released through the "four wall distribution" concept. ("Four-walling" is a sort-of self-distribution process where a filmmaker and/or distributor rents a theater to show their films, and receive all box-office revenues.) In an interview with "Variety Magazine" in 1977, Camp said, "It has become an industry-caused thing, but the G rated classification has to some degree become 'if it's G, it can't be for me'." Camp was concerned that "four-wall fast-buck distributors" had oversaturated the market for G-rated films, so in response to the low quality of these films, he created "Benji."