After '' Beauty and the Beast '' ( 1991 ) was unprecedentedly nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture at the 64th Academy Awards , then-studio chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg opted to produce another animated romance film in the hopes of achieving a similar feat . While '' Aladdin '' ( 1992 ) and '' The Lion King '' ( 1994 ) were considered to be too far into development , Katzenberg deemed '' Pocahontas '' a promising candidate , and thus pushed for the heroine to be older , the romance between her and Smith to be more mature , and the animals to be mute . Head of Story Tom Sito went on the record stating he wanted to include " broader " jokes , but the " higher-ups wanted it more winsome , more gentle . Some of the folks were so concerned about political correctness , they did n't want to be cuckoo-wacky about it . " Eric Goldberg – following his contributions to '' Aladdin '' as the supervising animator of the Genie and with all animation units for '' The Lion King '' already occupied – was asked to co-direct '' Pocahontas '' alongside Gabriel , to which he agreed . Likewise , he had originally expected the film to be more comedic and cartoonish like '' Aladdin '' , but Schneider informed him that the film would be produced in a vein more similar to that of '' Beauty and the Beast '' ; the then-ongoing 1992 Los Angeles riots further convinced Goldberg to commit to the film due to its racial themes . Executive interference would eventually grow so much that Goldberg himself decided to work for Chuck Jones Productions under the pseudonym " Claude Raynes " during production . It eventually reached a peak when Joe Grant drew Percy wearing an Indian feather , by which the animators took the concept one step further by placing a Spanish ruff on Meeko . One executive exclaimed , " Animals do n't have the intelligence to switch their clothes ! They do n't even have opposing thumbs . " The animators would retain their concept for the film
64th Academy Awards
64th Academy Awards
Pocahontas (1995 film)