Sir John Hurt loved working on this series, and wished it could've lasted for more than one season. Jim Henson also planned to use more detailed folktales and the Creature Shop to make hour-long episodes. Some completed scripts included ones based on Petrosinella; The Witch Baby, which was used in the 2011 StoryTeller graphic novel anthology; and Vasilissa the Beautiful, which was adapted into "The Storyteller: Witches" graphic novel series in 2014. Three more graphic novel series were made, "The StoryTeller: Dragons" in 2016 and "The Storyteller: Giants" and "The Storyteller: Fairies" in 2017. A video game was also planned to be made but never released.
Jim Henson hadn't actually thought of having the Storyteller's dog talk, but Anthony Minghella assumed from the outline, that since this was a Henson project, any animals would talk, and thus the Storyteller had a talking dog.
It took Anthony Minghella two years to research, write, and perfect the nine teleplays for this series.
Lisa Henson had taken a course in folklore as an undergraduate at Harvard, and suggested to her father Jim that he could use his creature shop to accurately realize these tales, and exploit the visual aspects of the stories.
Steve Barron was selected to direct the pilot, "Hans My Hedeghog". Jim Henson was already familiar with his work, because Barron directed two music videos for Labyrinth (1986). Barron persuaded Henson to shoot the series on 35mm film rather than video, and developed its unique visual style. All subsequent directors were told to absorb this style before directing their own installments. Series Writer Anthony Minghella even incorporated Barron's use of silhouettes years later when he directed The English Patient (1996).