- Four major versions of the film exist - the workprint, The Princess and the Cobbler, Arabian Knight, and the Recobbled Cut. Richard Williams' 1992 workprint was bootlegged on video, and copies have been shared among animation fans and professionals for years. It is an unfinished work in progress. A slightly later workprint from 13 May 1992 was preserved by Williams himself as "A Moment In Time," archived and digitally duplicated by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. "The Academy has it, it's in a 'golden box' now and it's safe," Williams said. The unfinished version was screened at the Academy's Samuel Goldwyn Theater.
- Fred Calvert's reworked version was released in 1993 as "The Princess and the Cobbler." It contains four new song sequences, re-dubbed voices, new music, and many edits. The Calvert-directed animation is often of low quality, and this version is so different from what Richard Williams intended that it was disowned by those involved, and Wiliams claimed to have never seen it.
- The American "Arabian Knight" cut from Miramax is derived from "Princess" but goes even farther with further re-dubbing (Steve Lively is replaced by Matthew Broderick as Tack, Bobbi Page is replaced by Jennifer Beals as Yum-Yum), new voices such as The Thief (silent in the Princess version) re-dubbed in the third-person by Jonathan Winters and Phido's vocal effects by Donald Pleasence replaced by dialog by Eric Bogosian. This cut also removes most of the remaining footage of the Mad Holy Old Witch and most of the war machine sequence. It also removes one song sequence and features the end credits over black (which in the Princess version feature "deleted" scenes of the Thief).
- In 2006, filmmaker and artist Garrett Gilchrist created a restoration of Williams' workprint, titled The Thief and the Cobbler: The Recobbled Cut. It was done in as high quality as possible by combining available sources at the time, including a video copy of Williams' workprint and a Japanese DVD release of Arabian Knight. This edit was much supported by numerous people who had worked on the film (except Richard Williams himself). Some scenes (like the wedding ending) had to be retouched frame by frame by Gilchrist due to flaws in the footage. Gilchrist described this as the most complex independent restoration of a film ever undertaken. This edit gained positive reviews on the Internet. The Recobbled Cut has been revised four times in 2006, 2008, 2013 and 2023. Each version incorporated further, higher-quality materials donated by animators from the films. Williams said that while he never saw Gilchrist's Recobbled Cut, he acknowledged the role that the edits had played in rehabilitating the film's reputation.
- The American video version reinstates the original title of "The Thief and the Cobbler", but is in all other respects the edit released by Miramax under the title "Arabian Knight".
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