This film is based on a true story.
The name of the corporation that the real life Cessna children became heirs to was the Cessna Aircraft company.
In an interview in 2011 with Jerry Saravia, this movie's star Scott Schwartz said: "-'Kidco' was based on the Cessna Family of Southern California. They really built an empire cleaning up horse manure and killing gophers. Really sounds like a fairy tale, but it really did happen. Got to meet them when we did the film, they were in their 20's, nice people ! . . . The film was finished up in late '82, the film sat for a year but Ron Maxwell had some pull and we got a 'courtesy' release in Alabama the spring of '84, the same weekend as this 'little' movie called 'Splash' [1984] was released.. needless to say, we didn't get many viewers and the movie was buried. It was a small $4 million dollar budget and 20th Century Fox had no faith in the film, so that was that. Ron Maxwell was a terrific director, really enjoyed working with him. He was direct to the point and never treated us kids as kids, he treated us as actors, the same as he treated Charlie Hallahan (the dad) and the other adults. Would enjoy working with him again sometime too."
The movie is based on a purchase of public land in Gorda in California, USA in 1979 by Kidco Limited Ventures which was a corporation owned by four children.
In an example of art imitating life, in addition to the four Cessna children becoming entrepreneurs, they were also paid for the film rights of their story, which resulted in this dramatized version of their real life story being made.