<Tr> <Th> Budget </Th> <Td> $55 million </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Th> Box office </Th> <Td> $346.1 million </Td> </Tr> <P> Pocahontas is a 1995 American animated musical drama film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation for Walt Disney Pictures, the 33rd Disney animated feature film . Directed by Mike Gabriel and Eric Goldberg, the film is inspired by the Native American woman Pocahontas, and portrays a fictionalized account of her historical encounter with Englishman John Smith and the Jamestown settlers that arrived from the Virginia Company . The voice cast stars Irene Bedard and Mel Gibson as Pocahontas and Smith, respectively, with David Ogden Stiers, Russell Means, Christian Bale, Billy Connolly, and Linda Hunt . The musical score was written by Alan Menken, with songs written by Menken and lyricist Stephen Schwartz . </P> <P> Following his directorial debut with The Rescuers Down Under (1990), Mike Gabriel conceived the idea for Pocahontas during a Thanksgiving weekend . The project went quickly into development concurrently with The Lion King (1994), and attracted most of Disney's top animators . Meanwhile, Disney studio chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg decided that the film should be a serious romantic epic in the vein of Beauty and the Beast (1991), in the hope that, like Beauty, it would be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture . Screenwriters Carl Binder, Susannah Grant, and Philip LaZebnik took creative liberties with history in an attempt to make the film palatable to audiences . </P>

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