Released in America with subtitles (not dubbed, as is sometimes suggested) in a rush to win back the money it lost in Japan before the studio went bankrupt. The film was advertised as the first X-rated animated film (even though Fritz le chat (1972) came out in the US first), but this did not help the movie find its audience in the States, and it ended up being a huge box office bomb for the studio.
Most of the team behind the film previously made the film's spiritual predecessor Les Mille et Une Nuits (1969). After Cleopatra seriously underperformed, the tensions among the production crew increased and culminated with a split over who gets to own the rights to Triton (1968) animation, their next planned job.