the idea to have a film set in Africa came about. Katzenberg jumped on the idea, thinking that it was a good one, and producer Thomas Schumacher also wanted in on the project. In November of 1988, Thomas Disch (who wrote 'The Brave Little Toaster') planned out a story called 'King of the Kalahari', which was then turned into a script called 'King of the Beasts' by Linda Woolverton. However, the original version of the script was nothing like the version that people would see in theaters in 1994. I'll talk more about that towards the end of this entry.

Work on the film began as early as 1991, and there was some upheaval during the initial months of planning, including having a director step down from the projectamidst a conflict of interest (George Scribner left the project after clashing with Roger Allers over whether the film should be a musical), a title change, and a setting change (initially set in the jungle, it moved to the African savannah). In fact, a lot of the staff left the project early on to work on the feature 'Pocahontas', because they believed it was going to be the more successful of the two films.

How wrong they were.

By 1992, the staff had been put firmly in place, and the project moved along, with the script being rewritten to accommodate the theme of 'leaving childhood behind to face adult responsibilities'. 1993 was spent trying to get the cast together to record the voices for the characters.

Because the main character, Simba,