White Rabbit

At 800ft, Alice in Wonderland was the longest film yet produced in Britain, running about 12 minutes. Its unusual length meant that it was not suitable for all film showings, where a variety of short subjects was considered ideal, so all the scenes were sold individually. A showman need only buy and show a single sequence, such as the Mad Hatter's Tea Party, not the whole film, which was less a self-contained story than an illustration of key moments from the book.

In 1903, there were two directors working at the Hepworth studio in Walton-on-Thames, Cecil Hepworth himself and Percy Stow. Hepworth was responsible for the studio's non-fiction films, while Stow made all the fiction films. This was such a large production that the two men worked together.