and record artist, Carey was becoming known as a songwriter, having penned and produced all of her own material throughout her career. During the production of Music Box, she was approached by Epic Records to write and record a song alongside Afanasieff, and release it on the soundtrack to the 1992 film Hero, featuring Dustin Hoffman and Geena Davis. While Carey was interested in the project, Mottola was very adamant over not allowing Carey to take part in anything involving film, fearing it would hurt her career. Additionally, Columbia felt uneasy about allowing their highest-selling recording artist to contribute to another label, even a branch of the same parent company, Sony. Instead, it was agreed upon that Carey would write a song for the soundtrack that would instead be recorded by another artist. Still interested in working for the film, Carey agreed to pen the feature song for the film, intended for fellow female singer, Gloria Estefan. Carey and Afanasieff sat together in a studio in New York, and over the course of two hours, composed the song's melody, lyric and concept. In an interview with Fred Bronson, Afanasieff discussed the process in which they had completed the rough version of the song: I went to New York and we were in the studio and came to a break. I was sitting at the piano and told Mariah about this movie. Within two hours, we had this incredible seed for this song, 'Hero'. It was never meant for Mariah to sing. In her mind, we were writing a song for Gloria Estefan for this movie. And we went into an area that Mariah didn't really go into-in her words, it was a little bit too schmaltzy or too ballady or too old-fashioned as far as melody and lyrics. As they completed the song's demo, Tommy Mottola, CEO of Sony Music Entertainment and Carey's fiancé, walked into the studio. After hearing the rough version of the song, on which they were still working, he became interested in it, asking what project the song belonged to. Carey explained to him the concept and how the song would be used for the film Hero. Mottola immediately took an intense liking to the song, responding, "Are you kidding me? You can't give this song to this movie. This is too good. Mariah, you have to take this song. You have to do it." Initially,