as the sets were being built in las vegas, producer frank mancuso, jr., son of paramount president frank mancuso, sr., had the screenplay rewritten in secret, and gave bakshi a new screenplay by screenwriters michael grais and mark victor that "was barely the same". larry gross also contributed to the script, but his work would later go on to be uncredited. in interviews at the time of the film's release, mancuso, jr., who was best known for the "friday the 13th" franchise, stated a desire to move away from horror films, and wanted to produce a film "about what happens when someone creates a world, becomes defined by it, and then can't escape [...] a film about being trapped by your own creation." bakshi remembers that he got into a fight with mancuso, jr. and "punched [him] in the mouth." paramount threatened bakshi with a lawsuit if he refused to complete the film. "i thought if i did the animation well, it would be worth it, but you know what? it wasn't worth it." bakshi also stated that he "had a lot of animators there that i'd brought in and i thought that maybe i could just have fun animating this stuff, which i did." bakshi had developed the film as a mix of comedy and horror that he described as "a hard r-rated story" but paramount wanted a pg-13 film, one of the reasons for the doomed and angry relationship between filmmaker and studio.