In May 1994, the Los Angeles Times reported that Don Bluth and Gary Goldman had signed a long-term deal to produce animated movies with Twentieth Century Fox, with the studio channelling more than $100 million in constructing the animation studio. For the location of the new animation studio, Phoenix, Arizona was selected, because the state offered the company about $1 million in job training funds and low-interest loans for the state-of-the-art digital animation equipment, with a staff of three hundred artists and technicians, including a third of which worked with Bluth and Goldman in Dublin, Ireland for Sullivan Bluth Studios. For their first project, the studio insisted they select one out of a dozen existing properties in which they owned, where Bluth and Goldman suggested adapting Il re ed io (1956) and My Fair Lady (1964), though Bluth and Goldman felt it would be impossible to improve on Audrey Hepburn's performance, and Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe's score. Following several story suggestions, the idea to adapt this movie originated from Fox Filmed Entertainment CEO Bill Mechanic. They would later adapt story elements from Pygmalion, with the peasant Anya being molded into a regal woman. Warner Brothers made an animated version of "The King and I" in 1999, which was a commercial flop.

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