Kingdom of the Sun Following the theatrical release of
The Lion King (1994),
Roger Allers was called into
Thomas Schumacher's office to discuss his next project. Inside his office, Schumacher explained that Disney Feature Animation was interested in exploring ancient cultures for prospective film projects. He held three pictures representative of the Inca,
Aztec, and
Mayan cultures. Allers chose the Inca culture as he became intrigued with the visual possibilities of the
Inca creation myth. Allers would base his story on
Anthony Hope's adventure novel
The Prisoner of Zenda. Alongside co-writer
Matthew Jacobs, Allers formulated the idea for
Kingdom of the Sun, in which development on the project began in 1994. Upon
pitching the project to then-Disney CEO and chairman
Michael Eisner, Allers recalled Eisner saying, "It has all of the elements of a classic Disney film", and because of his directorial success on
The Lion King that same year, Eisner allowed Allers to have free rein with both the casting and the storyline. In January 1995,
Variety reported that Allers was working on "an Inca-themed original story". In 1996, the production crew traveled to
Machu Picchu in
Peru, to study Inca artifacts and architecture, and the landscape this empire was created in.
Kingdom of the Sun was to have been a tale of a greedy, selfish emperor (voiced by
David Spade) who finds a
peasant (voiced by
Owen Wilson) who looks just like him; the emperor swaps places with the peasant to escape his boring life and have fun, much as in author
Mark Twain's
archetypal novel
The Prince and the Pauper. The villainous witch Yzma (voiced by
Eartha Kitt) has plans to summon
Supay (the evil god of death), and destroy the
sun so that she may become young and beautiful forever (the sun gives her wrinkles, so she surmises that living in a world of darkness would prevent her from aging). Discovering the switch between the prince and the peasant, Yzma turns the real emperor into a llama and threatens to reveal the peasant's identity unless he obeys her. During his time as the emperor and doing Yzma's orders, the peasant falls in love with the emperor's soon-to-be fiancée Nina, who thinks he is the emperor who has changed his ways. Meanwhile, the emperor-llama learns humility in his new form and even comes to love a female llama-herder named Mata (voiced by
Laura Prepon). Together, the girl and the llama set out to undo the witch's plans. Film critic
James Berardinelli wrote that the film would have been a "romantic comedy musical in the 'traditional' Disney style". After both
Pocahontas and
The Hunchback of Notre Dame performed below expectations at the box office, studio executives felt that the project was growing too ambitious and serious for audiences following test screenings, and needed more comedy. In early 1997, producer
Randy Fullmer contacted and offered
Mark Dindal, who had just wrapped up work on
Warner Bros.' ''
Cats Don't Dance, to be co-director on Kingdom of the Sun''. Meanwhile, Allers personally called
Sting, in the wake of
Elton John's success with
The Lion King: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, to compose several songs for the film. This film, which was eventually entitled
The Sweatbox, was made by Xingu Films (their production company). Along with collaborator
David Hartley, Sting composed eight songs inextricably linked with the original plot and characters.
Harvey Fierstein was also cast as Huaca, a 10,000-year-old rock who kept a sharp eye on the emperors who ruled before Manco. the project became dormant with production costs amounting to $25–30 million,
Production overhaul and changes Upset that Allers left the project, Eisner gave Fullmer two weeks to salvage the project or production would be completely shut down. Meanwhile, following
Eric Goldberg's pitch for the
Rhapsody in Blue segment for
Fantasia 2000, the animators were reassigned to work on the segment. Story work on the revised film started when they knew what to retain from the original version, namely Spade as Manco and Kitt as Yzma, with the remaining elements to be written around those characters. came up with the idea of making Pacha an older character as opposed to the teenager that he was in the original version, as to be the opposite of Manco. One of the new additions to the revised story was the scene-stealing character of Yzma's sidekick Kronk. Kronk was inspired by actor
Rick Rossovich, according to Williams, and as they wrote for him, Reynolds immediately thought of casting
Patrick Warburton for the role based on his character Puddy from
Seinfeld. Because of the shutdown, the animated film
Dinosaur assumed the summer 2000 release date originally scheduled for
Kingdom. Fullmer would inform Sting by telephone that his songs, related to specific scenes and characters that were now gone, had to be dropped. Bitter about the removal of his songs, the pop musician commented: "At first, I was angry and perturbed. Then I wanted some vengeance." Disney eventually agreed to allow three of the six deleted songs as bonus tracks on the
soundtrack album, such as Yzma's villain song "Snuff Out the Light", the love song "One Day She'll Love Me" and the dance number "Walk the Llama, Llama". Kuzco—who was a supporting character in the original story—became the protagonist. In the summer of 1999, cast members Owen Wilson, Harvey Fierstein, and Trudie Styler were dropped from the film. Kitt and Spade remained in the cast, Dindal commented, "[a]nd then
John Goodman and
Patrick Warburton came aboard." After Sting's songs for
Kingdom of the Sun were dropped from the new storyline, Sting remained on the project, although he was told by the studio that "[a]ll we want is a beginning and an end song." The song, "Perfect World", was approached "to open the movie with a big, fun number that established the power of Kuzco and showed how he controlled the world", according to then-Feature Animation president
Thomas Schumacher. The filmmakers had asked Sting to perform the song for the film, although Sting declined by telling them that he was too old to sing it and that they should find someone younger and hipper. They instead went with
Tom Jones, who is eleven years older than Sting. In February 2000, the new film was announced as ''The Emperor's New Groove'' with its new story centering on a spoiled Inca Emperor—voiced by Spade—who through various twists and falls ends up learning the true meaning of friendship and happiness from a poor peasant voiced by Goodman. The release date was shifted to December 2000. Despite the phrasing of the title, the film is not related to
Hans Christian Andersen's classic Danish fairy tale "
The Emperor's New Clothes", although both stories involve an emperor being tricked. According to Mark V. Moorhead of the
Houston Press, the film's plot bears some resemblance to that of
The Golden Ass by
Apuleius, wherein a man is turned into a donkey. Eisner cited concerns regarding tonal similarity to
Hercules (1997), aiming to avoid repeating the commercial underperformance of that film. Dindal and Fullmer assured him that ''The Emperor's New Groove'', as the film was now called, would have a much smaller cast, making it easier to attract audiences. Towards the end of production, the film's ending originally had Kuzco building his Kuzcotopia amusement park on another hill by destroying a rainforest near Pacha's home and inviting the former and his family to visit. Horrified at the ending as an
environmentalist, As a result, the ending was rewritten,
Design and animation During the production of
Kingdom of the Sun, Deja was the initial supervising animator of Yzma and incorporated
supermodel poses published in magazines to capture Yzma's sultry and seductive persona.
Nik Ranieri was originally slated as the supervising animator for Yzma's rocky sidekick, Huaca. During the research trip to Peru in 1996, Ranieri acknowledged that he was "researching for a character that looked like a rock so I was stuck drawing rocks for the whole trip. Then when we got back they piled it into this story about ancient Incas." Mark Pudleiner was to be the supervising animator of Kuzco's proposed maiden, Nina. In early 1997,
David Pruiksma came on board to animate the llama, Snowball. According to Pruiksma, Snowball was "a silly, vain and egotistical character, rather the dumb blond of the llama set. I really enjoyed developing the character and doing some early test animation on her as well. Before I left the film (and it was ultimately shelved), I created model sheets for not only Snowball, but for the rest of the herd of seven other llamas and for Kuzco as a Llama." When the film was placed on production shutdown, Pruiksma transferred to work on
Atlantis: The Lost Empire being developed concurrently and ultimately the llama characters were dropped from the storyline. Because of the subsequent departure of Deja, animator
Dale L. Baer inherited the character of Yzma. Using Kitt's gestures during recording sessions, Baer commented: "She has a natural voice for animation and really got into the role. She would gesture wildly and it was fun just to watch her. She would come into each session almost serious and very professional and suddenly she would go wild and break up laughing." Ranieri was later asked to serve as the supervising animator of Kuzco (as a human and a llama), although he would admit being reluctant at first until he discovered that Kuzco "had a side to him, there was a lot of comedy potential and as a character he went through an arc". In addition to drawing inspiration from Spade during recording sessions, the Kuzco animation team studied llamas at the zoo, visited a llama farm, watched nature documentaries, and even observed the animals up close when they came for a visit to the studio. During the last eighteen months of production, a 120-crew of
clean-up artists would take the character animators' drawings and place a new piece of paper over the existing drawing to draw a cleaner, more refined image. The motion reference material for the film was extensive, and included live-action footage of the actors, respectively including Gustavo Rodríguez (born in 1981), Delia Reátegui (born 1963), Alonso Cano (born 1989), and Gabriela Villalobos (born 1988) as Kuzco, Chicha, and Chicha's slim children Tipo and Chaca, performing the scenes. Clean-up supervisor Vera Pacheco, whose crew worked on more than 200,000 drawings for the film, said: "We're basically the final designers."
Iconography ''The Emperor's New Groove'' incorporates various visual and cultural elements inspired by the
Andean world, particularly the Inca Empire, although its representation is heavily filtered through a Western comedic lens. The film's setting—a mountainous landscape with shifting terrains—resembles the highlands of Peru and draws visual parallels to well-known archaeological sites such as Machu Picchu. Reportedly inspired by a photo of Machu Picchu hanging in Schumacher's office, Allers proposed an
epic Disney
musical film set in Peru during the Inca Empire. While the location in the film is fictional, architectural motifs, agricultural terraces, and stepped structures resemble Andean features. Costume and textile designs in the film further reflect Andean aesthetics. Characters are depicted wearing
ponchos, tunics, and headdresses that mirror traditional
Andean garments. These garments feature geometric patterns and earth-toned colors—such as reds, yellows, and greens—that are historically significant in Andean textile traditions. Yzma is costumed in black and purple, Animals play a significant role in the film's iconography. Llamas, native to the
Andes and essential to transportation and agriculture, are central to the plot—most notably in the transformation of Emperor Kuzco into a llama. This metamorphosis loosely echoes Andean spiritual motifs of transformation, although it is recontextualized for comedic effect rather than to convey religious or cosmological meaning. Other animals with Andean symbolic associations, such as
jaguars and
condors, appear in background elements and wilderness scenes. In the mid-2010s, the film sparked a discussion among
leftists around
cultural appropriation versus representation. While it visually references Andean culture, it simplifies or omits core aspects such as governance, spiritual practices, and astronomical knowledge. Critics observed that this reflects broader trends in Western media that prioritize entertainment value over cultural accuracy when depicting non-Western civilizations. For example, although it is recognizable to archaeologists, ''The Emperor's New Groove
does not explicitly say that it is set in Inca Peru; this was contrasted with Brother Bear and its portrayal of the traditions and culture of Alaska Natives. Nevertheless, The Emperor's New Groove'' remains notable for its use of recognizable Andean imagery. Through stylized depictions of architecture, textiles, and symbolic animals, the film offers a visual homage to Andean culture, although one that prompts critical discourse regarding the balance between cultural inspiration and narrative integrity. The album included Spanish and Italian versions of "
My Funny Friend and Me", == Release ==