After Merian C. Cooper got to RKO, British mystery writer Edgar Wallace was contracted to write the first draft of the screen story. It was simply referred to as "The Beast". RKO executives were unimpressed with the bland title. David O. Selznick suggested Jungle Beast as the film's new title, but Cooper was unimpressed and wanted to name the film after the main character. He stated he liked the "mystery word" aspect of Kong's name and that the film should carry "the name of the leading mysterious, romantic, savage creature of the story" such as with Dracula and Frankenstein. RKO sent a memo to Cooper suggesting the titles Kong: King of Beasts, Kong: The Jungle King, and Kong: The Jungle Beast, which combined his and Selznick's proposed titles. As time went on, Cooper would eventually name the story simply Kong while Ruth Rose was writing the final version of the screenplay. Because Selznick thought that audiences would think that the film, with the one word title of Kong, would be mistaken as a docudrama like Grass (Grass: A Nation's Battle for Life (1925)) and Chang (Chang: La giungla misteriosa (1927)), which were one-word titled films that Cooper had earlier produced, he added the "King" to Kong's name in order to differentiate it.

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