Initially, Russell Crowe signed up for the title role, but in the autumn of 2001 he was replaced by Brad Pitt because Crowe was too busy working on another project.
This movie lost $125 million, which partially led to the sale of PDI/DreamWorks, the DreamWorks SKG animation department, being renamed DreamWorks Animation SKG in 2004.
Spike, Sinbad's dog, was more popular in a screen test than Sinbad himself, so the filmmakers added in seven new Spike scenes before the film was released.