The origins of the film began when Jeffrey Katzenberg, who at the time was chairman of The Walt Disney Studios, had came up with an idea, in which he had told studio executives that he was gonna give them money to either buy or option a script, in an effort to make more product for the studio, Todd Garner, a studio executive at Touchstone Pictures, a subsidiary of Disney, instead went to make a movie, he had come up with an idea, and pitched it to screenwriter Scott Rosenberg, who wrote the script, and D.J. Caruso was hired to direct.
Studio executives were not happy about the film.