Story work on the revised film started when they knew what to retain from the original version, namely David Spade as Manco and Eartha Kitt as Yzma, with the remaining elements would be written around those characters. Chris Williams, who was a storyboard artist during "Kingdom of the Sun", came up with the idea of making Pacha an older character as opposed to the teenager that he was in the original version, as to be the opposite of Manco. Following up on the new idea, former late-night comedy writer David Reynolds stated, "I pitched a simple comedy that's basically a buddy road picture with two guys being chased in the style of a Chuck Jones 'toon, but faster paced. Disney said, 'Give it a shot." One of the new additions to the revised story was the scene-stealing character of Yzma's sidekick Kronk. Kronk was inspired by actor Rick Rossovich, according to Williams, and as they wrote for him, Reynolds immediately thought of casting Patrick Warburton for the role based on his character Puddy from "Seinfeld". Meanwhile, the name Manco was changed to Kuzco following Fullmer's discovery of the Japanese slang term "manko", which translates to cunt. Due in part of the production shutdown, Sting began to develop schedule conflicts with his songwriting duties interfering with his work on his next album he was planning to record in Italy. "I write the music, and then they're supposed to animate it, but there are constantly changes being made. It's constantly in turnaround," the singer-songwriter admitted, but "I'm enjoying it." Because of the shutdown, the computer-animated film "Dinosaur" assumed the summer 2000 release date originally scheduled for "Kingdom".