Upon numerous delays to produce a script draft, Lerner was fired from the project on May 7, 1965 due to his endless procrastination stretching over a year as well wanting to continue work on the Broadway musical, "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever". Following Lerner's departure, Jacobs considered hiring the Sherman Brothers, who had just won for the Academy Award for Best Original Song for "Mary Poppins" (1964), but they were still under contract to Disney. Jacobs then hired Leslie Bricusse, who was in high demand after his success with the musical "Stop the World – I Want to Get Off". Determined to make a good impression for his first screenplay commission, Bricusse proved agreeably productive from the start for Jacobs, suggesting numerous story ideas and adding a female leading character to the film during their first meeting on May 6, 1965. Zanuck signed Bricusse on for a trial run, hiring him temporarily to complete two songs for the film and the first twenty pages of a script. Two weeks after he was brought on to the project, Bricusse presented the song "Talk to the Animals" composed in mind for Harrison in which he was officially hired. By July 1965, Bricusse followed up with a full script that included various song suggestions while effectively blunting the book's racist content in an adaptation that was met with approval from Josephine Lofting.