his fiddle while overlooking the compound. Cast Production Development and writing The origin of the project began in the mid 1990's, with screenwriter Leslie Bohem, who had previously worked on films such as A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child, and Dante’s Peak. Bohem had a conversation with Braveheart screenwriter Randall Wallace at the Austin Film Festival, who told Bohem about a trip he had taken to San Antonio to take a look at The Alamo. Bohem then set off to write a script. In 1998, Touchstone Pictures, a subsidiary of Disney bought the screenplay, and hired Ron Howard and Brian Grazer as producers, with Howard originally set to direct. In January 2001, Variety announced that Kevin Jarre was writing a new script, In October of the same year, it was announced that John Sayles was hired to write a new draft, Sayles, who previously had written and directed Lone Star, had came up with a 137-page draft that was considered brilliant, In contrast to the 1960 film of the same name starring John Wayne, this film was going to attempt to depict the political points of view from both the Mexican and Texan sides, as well as explore the personal lives of Alamo heroes William Travis, Jim Bowie and Davy Crockett. Additionally, Santa Anna is more prominently featured. As Howard mentioned in an interview: "I believe audiences are ready to embrace the complexities of the film, but it still boils down to heroism,” “The simplistic approach is not appropriate and it’s not interesting, We know there will be limitations and controversies" In June 2002, it was announced that Stephen Gaghan was hired to rewrite Sayles's script. Howard stated that he wanted to shoot a grittier film, much in the style of Sam Peckinpah's work, with a budget costing about $130 million and having an R rating, further elaborating in interviews at the time with IGN and The Oklahoman, Howard said:"I kept saying I sort of wanted to do "Traffic", we kept working on the screenplay with that kind of multicharacter, multistory line kind of approach. "I can't say we ever had anything on paper that I could look at the studio and say, "You've got it. You're fools if you don't do this just this way, we didn't have that. It was still this idea, this notion in my mind more than a really fully realized script"