After making his directorial debut with "The Rescuers Down Under" (1990), Gabriel conceived the film during a Thanksgiving weekend. The project went into development concurrently with "The Lion King" (1994), and attracted most of Disney's top animators. Meanwhile, Disney studio chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg decided the film should be a serious romantic epic in the vein of "Beauty and the Beast" (1991), in hope that like "Beauty", it would also be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Screenwriters Carl Binder, Susannah Grant, and Philip LaZebnik took creative liberties with history in an attempt to make the film palatable to audiences.