Other candidates were Daniel Craig, Robert De Niro, Ralph Fiennes, Hugh Grant, Madonna, Shaquille O'Neal and Michael Tyson. It was the first-ever Chinese picture to have it be dubbed English on its North American release. The DVD of the English dub was released by Lions Gate Entertainment on September 24, 2013. "Legend of a Rabbit" was a commercial flop at the Chinese box office, only managing to gross CNY16.2 million out of its CNY120 million budget. It had earned over CNY10 million on its first week. The film's director considered that the reason for the very little amount of viewing for cartoon movies was due to the audience's habits. However, in March 2013, it was #6 on Redbox's Family Top 20. Some Chinese netizens have considered the film to be a rip-off of the 2008 American film "Kung Fu Panda". Reacting to this, Yijun denied that "Legend of a Rabbit" was even based on the film and said he was confused by the netizens' response. Response of the film from critics was mixed to negative. "The Hollywood Reporter" said the film had "potential to be a cheeky finger-up to the Kung Fu Panda franchise", but noted the lack of "eye-popping action, incident or humor to nourish the congee-thin plot," saying that it was "sweet but not enough of a funny bunny." "The Sun Daily" called it "a commendable effort. It's only fault is that it has to stand up against the technically-slick productions from Hollywood." Japancinema.net graded it a D, calling it an "unoriginal, messy, waste of time, waste of money film that hopefully I can forget as fast as I watched it." Linus Tee, writing for moviexclusive.com, criticized the film's humor and CGI quality, stating it would've been better if it had more-polished technological resources and dialogues. Writing for the magazine "Starburst", Andrew Pollard named it "one of those movies that you will regret giving your time to, and it will have you thinking of all the other, better ways you could have spent ninety minutes of your day, such as chewing glass or repainting the house and then watching the walls dry", giving it three out of ten stars. On the positive side, the Dove Foundation awarded the film a score of 3 out of 5, saying that the "characters are memorable and the theme of loyalty is not to be missed in this movie!"