After some delays due to story rewrites, James Algar was appointed to direct the film. By April 1941, work on "The Wind in the Willows" had begun as animators and writers had come off from "Bambi", which was nearly complete. When the Disney animators' strike was finished in October 1941, Joe Rosenberg of the Bank of America issued an ultimatum in which he would permit an absolute loan limit of $3.5 million, and in return, he ordered the studio to restrict itself to producing animation shorts and to finish features already in production—"Dumbo", "Bambi", and "The Wind in the Willows"—but no other feature film would begin work until they had been released and earned back their costs. In response, the studio's feature film production, including early versions of "Alice in Wonderland" and "Lady and the Tramp", were heavily scaled back while "The Wind in the Willows" was kept in production as animation work had already begun. However, after reviewing the animation footage, Disney decided to shelve the project deciding that "the quality was too far below the standard necessary to be successful on the market."